A Poison Tree (Time, Blood and Karma Book 3) (16 page)

22

ADELE

Sometimes, you have to do the right thing.

So Adele went back to St. Mark’s. She felt obligated, despite the fact she found her situation absurd. She knew that if Simon was aware of how she spent the bulk of her weekends, he would be horrified. At the very least, his interactions with her would take on a more formal character.
He would mutate from a friend into a priest who was trying to save a fallen woman. She didn’t want that. For one thing, she didn’t want to be saved. She liked Simon, and found him easy to be with, but she valued her independence.

Adele put aside her
nascent concern that his interest in her might go beyond friendship. A fish and chip supper did not a romance make.

He is a nice man, whose company I enjoy. Period.

For her second trip to the church, she carried with her a holdall containing clothes to change into for her Sunday shift at the club. She was acutely aware there was something downright sacrilegious about bringing skimpy lace underwear, condoms and sex toys into a church, but she couldn’t risk being late to work again if Simon invited her back to the vicarage for tea.

In spite of the vicar’s enthusiasm and charm, the service had a sluggish quality about it. Adele put this down to a lack of energy on the part of the congregation.
It was like wading through porridge, trying to stir this lot. Other than one little boy who was either hyperactive or had an infestation of ants in his trousers, the worshippers were lethargic.

Perhaps it was the p
re-Millennium blues, or trepidation that the Second Coming was still some way off. For many of them, their own funeral service would likely precede the destruction of the planet. As they filed out of St. Mark’s through the churchyard, Adele could not banish the idea that for the more doddery attendees, the Grim Reaper may well be hovering nearby and checking his watch.

Hardly
worth their while going home.

An invitation to tea followed the service, but this time it was not for Adele alone. Two of the blue rinse brigade were invited, along with the Edwardian-looking gentleman – who
, Adele had learned, was called Ambrose - and the ice-faced Eleanor.

The gathering was inhibited, to say the least. Curiosity about Adele was evident
. If the good parishioners of St. Mark’s had been aware of the contents of Adele’s bag, they would no doubt have been even more fascinated. However, only Eleanor was interested or nosey enough to ask questions, which she did with the subtlety of a blood-covered assassin wielding a broadsword.

“So do you have any children?” she said, with a sideways glance at Simon.

“Yes, a boy. Jamie.”

“That’s nice,” observed Ambrose, helping himself to a biscuit.

“And Darrow is your husband’s name, presumably?” Eleanor pressed. “It doesn’t sound Scottish.”

“Well, it
is Scottish. My family is originally from Darroch, in Stirlingshire. The name comes from the Gaelic,
darach
, meaning ‘oak tree’. And it’s
my
family name, by the way. Not my husband’s. In fact,” she said, bending forward to pick up her cup, “I don’t have a husband.”

“Are you a widow?” said Eleanor.
“Or divorced?” The older woman’s top lip curled in undisguised distaste.

“No. I’ve never been married,” Adele replied, enjoying the uncomfortable silence.

“So your boy is –”

“Illegitimate, yes.
And where I come from in Glasgow, people are a lot less mealy-mouthed about it. They would say he was a bastard. In much the same way as they would refer to a certain type of woman as a bitch.”

Ambrose stifled a laugh.

“More tea, anyone?” said Simon.

Adele applied the massage oil to David’s shoulders.

She sat astride him as he lay face down on her bed, a small towel draped across his buttocks. She worked her way down his back and pressed her thumbs
on the line of his spine.

“Can I ask you a question, David?”

“Is it a personal one?”

“Yes. Yes, it is. You don’t have to answer.”

“All right.”

“Well, I know you’re married and you told me a while back you have a daughter.” She stopped massaging and rested her hands on his lower back.

“That’s not a question.”

There was a beat before she spoke again. “Why do you come to see me?”

“Don’t you want me to come and see you?” He sounded tired.

“It’s not that.”

“What, then?”

“That first time we met – at t
he Gold Club – it was obvious you felt uncomfortable, and had come to the club on a whim or something. You were embarrassed and quite sweet. I liked you straightaway. And I knew we weren’t going to have sex. It was evident you weren’t the sort of man to pay for sex. Yet there you were.”

She stopped to let him speak, but he continued to lie still, listening.

“I was surprised when you asked me for my number. And since then, of course, you’ve been here many times, yet every time … uh, this is none of my business.” Adele paused, unsure how to continue.

David turned so he was resting on his right elbow.

“Do you want to know why I come here to see you and every time just have a massage? You want to know why I don’t make love to you?”

“Yes.”

He swivelled further so that he could look at her.

“Maybe I can’t get it up, but I’m too proud to admit it
.” He smiled, but she detected a sadness behind his eyes.

Adele
moved her head to one side. “No, that’s not it. You’ve had some sorrow in your life that you come here to escape. Something you can’t talk about with your wife and family. You want some quiet, I think. And maybe some non-judgemental physical contact.”

“Have you ever
considered taking up psychiatry?”

“I’m not trying to get rid of you, David. I am putting this clumsily, I know. I’m sorry.”

He reached out and squeezed her hand.

“I’m conscious that you’re paying me a lot of money
just for a massage. I feel like I’m taking advantage of you. And I like you, so it makes me feel bad.”

“Do you want us to have sex? Would that make you feel better about our arrangement?”

She slapped him playfully on the back. “That’s a trick question. You and I both know that’s never going to happen. If my feminine wiles haven’t worked on you in the last eighteen months, they’re not going to start working now.”

Adele kissed him on the shoulder. “I’ve had customers who only want to talk. All the girls have. They usually see us once or twice then disappear, because they move on. Maybe it’s time for you to move on.
Anyway, supposing your wife were to find out you come to see me. She will find out sooner or later, you know. Do you think she’ll believe you only have a massage? Would any wife believe that? Seriously?”

“You think I’m taking a big risk for nothing.”
David sighed. “Do you know you’re the second person in the last few weeks who has refused to take my money? And on the same grounds. That it’s not good for me.”

“Are you annoyed with me?”

“No.”

“Do you think I’m crazy turning away business?”

“No. I think you’re a good woman. And there aren’t too many of those around.”

“The tart with a heart, right?”

He studied her for a moment. “You’re not a tart. Not at all. And what is more, you’re right. I do need to move on.”

Adele climbed off the bed and David sat up, wrapping the towel around himself. “And by the way,” he said, “I
guess I owe it to you to tell you why I have needed to get away.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I lost my son,”

“Your son?”

David spoke slowly, his voice low. “Or to be more accurate, I never had a son to lose. He was stillborn, you see. Two years ago. A few months before we met. I’ve had difficulty coming to terms, getting over it. But at some stage, I realise I have to. We can’t mourn forever, can we?”

“No. We can’t.”

“I’d better go.”

At that moment, she wanted to embrace him, to pour out her heart and her own loss. She knew he would understand.
Of all people, he would understand. But she couldn’t. She had held back too long. And now she would never see him again.

In our
end we find our beginning.

“I’ll miss you, David.
I hope you know that.”

“I’ll miss you too, Adele. And I hope you know
that
.”

After David left, Adele straightened up the apartment and made herself tea.

She had surprised herself, talking like that to him. It hadn’t been planned, but on reflection it felt right. Yet there was a price. She had lost a friend. A friend who, unknowing, shared with her a common sorrow.

Sometimes, you have to do the right thing.

23

DAVID

We can rail against the storms and injustices of the world.

But the world won’t care.

We can exhaust ourselves attempting to retrofit reality so it makes sense to us.

But it still won’t. We can pretend it does, but it won’t.

The universe remains obdurate to our cries.
Mulish deafness is its natural state.

And so, in the absence of a caring sentience, we are left to make the best of things.

We manage.

We adjust our expectations, pare down our dreams.

We carry on, because the only alternative is not to carry on. Whereupon we allow ourselves to tumble into the void.

So I gave myself a
stiff talking-to. I pronounced that there were many people worse off than me – most of the six point billion something humans on the planet, to be almost-precise.

Everything is changed, yet everything is the same. How pernicious is knowledge. How comforting is ignorance. It is our refuge. I wished I had never
gone to see Cumberbatch. If I could have put my hands around the throat of the poison pen writer, I surely would have done.

For that was the only killing to which I would have been a
willing party.

I was not Jim Fosse.

Whatever twisted mind games it was that aroused him – whether he derived his sick pleasures from screwing with my mind, or from contemplating his wife’s death, was of no interest to me. I may have been a man sinned against, but I had done my own share of sinning too.

The resolution formed never to see Fosse again. The American’s appearance may have been unremarkable, but his mind went to places where it was dangerous to follow.
There would be no Faustian pact between us.

I
decided to wait out the end of Claire’s affair with Jack. I would hold my tongue, rein in the proud part of me that felt the sting of humiliation. Claire had always been faithful before. Of that I was certain. I had not fallen prey to a complete collapse of reason. She was a loyal person. This current aberration aside, I knew her. And because I knew her, I also realised how her infidelity would tear at her too. Deception came at a cost. Claire was worth the wait. Our marriage could survive this, I told myself.

I recalled those words she had said to me long ago.

You will always give someone a second chance, David. And we all need that at some time.

I
t became a mantra for me, a charm to stop the embers of resentment from catching alight. I repeated it when Claire told me she would be making another trip to London in November.

“If a tree falls in the forest, and there is nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound?” I asked Ian.

“What?”

“It’s a Zen riddle, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“Yes. I assumed with your accumulated Buddhist wisdom, you’d be able to solve it for me.”

“The ants would hear it.”

“Come again?”

“Or the tree sloths. They’d hear it.”

“What tree sloths?”

“Or the spiders.”

“Do spiders have ears?”

“Or they’d fucking feel it come down. Especially if it fell on them.”

He went back to stacking bottles. It was quiet in the Bell. Two customers, including me. I wasn’t even sure whether the old guy in the corner was still alive.

“Are you going to have another beer?” he said.
“If you want to take advantage of my transcendental knowledge, you have to expect to pay for it.”

“Go on, then.”

“Anyway,” he continued, pulling the pint, “I’ve got a question for you.”

“I’m all ears. Like the spiders.”

“If a woman cuts down a tree in the forest, and there is no man to help her, how long will it take?”

“Do you know what sexism is, Ian?”

“Isn’t that a company that specialises in making bikinis for girls with big butts?”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I think they also manufacture tents.”

Jim Fosse did not attend the next Chamber of Commerce meeting. Lots of bored, miserable-looking people did, though. I know because I was one of them.

The guest motivational speaker lectured us on what business in the twenty-first century might be like. Robots and the
Internet took prominence in his nasal diatribe.

“Seven billion people on the planet by the end of the next decade
.” His voice rose like that of a ham actor in a Shakespearean tragedy. “Imagine all those new customers!”

I imagined them. Most of them
would be in emerging nations, born into poverty where the vast majority would remain as slaves to the triple deities of capitalism, religious bigotry and predatory politics. The new Hindu pantheon for the Information Age. Or the Disinformation Age, perhaps. We are born, we buy stuff, then some more stuff, and finally we die. The Hymn of the Market.

Some days I wonder what the hell I am doing in business, accumulating wealth the same way clogged arteries accumulate more fat. We need to question what it’s all for, how much is enough. It’s easier
, however, just to keep going, to stay with the trajectory. It’s hard to turn around a super tanker.

Poor indeed is the man who just has money.
Though not as poor as those as-yet-unborn souls in Africa. We in the West are complaining bastards.

Chief moaner of the evening, and front-runner for Grumpy Git of the Millennium Award (Leicester Area), was Mat
Hoggard.

“I hate futurists,” he muttered, as the speaker turned his attention to the topic of genetically-modified crops. “They always make me feel like a dinosaur.”

“That’s probably because you are a dinosaur,” I said. “Perhaps you should be genetically-modified too.”

Mat grunted.

“What’s eating you today?”

“Ebola.”

“That’s almost funny.”

The voice from the podium had segued into the human genome project and the prospect of
a much-extended lifespan.

“Consider the implications for evolutionary progress and for population size.”

We had circled back to customers. It sounded like most of them would be ancient and in need of high-quality medical services. I sneaked a look at my watch. I hoped the talk would be over soon. Going by the glazed sets of eyes around me, there wouldn’t be many questions.

“What do you make of Jim Fosse?” Mat whispered to me.

“He’s a bit –” I grappled for the right word, and settled for
unusual
.

“He is that.
Do you know why he invited us all round to dinner like that, out of the blue?” Mat was studying me.

“No. No idea. Why do you ask?”

Mat’s eyes became evasive. “No reason. I just wondered.”

After the lecture ended, I made a fast getaway. I had a headache and needed some fresh air, so I took a stroll through the evening streets of the city. It gave me the opportunity to call Katie to see how she was settling in at Oxford. She sounded bubbly and full of an enthusiasm I could only envy. I was in no hurry to get home. Claire was working on year end accounts and would be locked away in the study for a while yet.

I wandered into the Town Hall Square where I’d last had lunch with Anna. It was deserted apart from a courting couple on one of the benches.

It had been a while since Anna and I had talked. I had played golf with her unreliable spouse since then and done my best to be amicable, for my sister-in-law’s sake, but I found it hard to disguise the fact that I found him a superficial and slippery customer.

Then
, as I left the Square, I saw Max.

He was headed towards the clock tower and appeared to be in a hurry. To see him on foot was unusual. The only time I ever saw him walking was on a golf course. He was one of those people who parked right next to wherever he was going. He liked to be seen arriving in his flashy sports car.

A very noticeable, easily-identifiable sports car.

Some impulse made me follow him. Whether it was concern for Anna or idle curiosity, I couldn’t say. But there was something about his movement that looked furtive, and every few yards he would look around as if he were somewhere he shouldn’t be.

I trailed him from what I considered to be a safe distance, staying close to the shop frontages. He walked briskly past the clock tower and took a left turn into the High Street.

Even a trained monkey can be a private detective
, Cumberbatch had said. I would put that hypothesis to the test. I switched my cell phone to silent. Just in case.

The
re were a lot of people milling around restaurants and watering-holes, which made my task of remaining invisible easier. A couple of skateboarders zipped around and a weary-looking tramp held out his hand as I passed. It was just coming up to nine o’clock.

Almost at the end of the street
, Max headed right. I paused at the corner to make sure he hadn’t stopped. About fifty yards ahead of me was a hotel, of the type frequented by travelling businessmen or families on a budget. The sign proclaimed the Lodge. As Max reached the entrance, he scanned the street and I dodged behind a parked car. He hadn’t seen me.

Approaching from the other direction was an attractive woman in a business suit, who waved to him. I recognised her immediately.

It was Jim Fosse’s wife, Monique.

They embraced
and went into the hotel.

I
rested my back against the wall of a shuttered shop and lit a Marlboro while I considered what to do next.

It was then I received my second surprise of the evening.

Concealed in a doorway across from the Lodge, his face lit by the glow of a cigar, was a tubby man of middle height.  His eyes were focused on the front of the hotel. I watched him take out a small book and make some notes.

So now I knew why Jim Fosse had not been at the lecture. He had more
pressing matters to attend to.