Adam and Eve and Pinch Me (17 page)

“It’s no good, you’ll have to go, Sarah. I can’t stand the worry and the noise, not with your father like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hearing Jordan crying all the time that set this second attack off. You can stop tonight in a hotel. Goodness knows, it’s not as if you were short of money.”

At five that afternoon Zillah checked them into a hotel on the outskirts of Reading. Eugenie and Jordan were tired and after they’d eaten pizza and chips, went immediately to bed and to sleep. For once, Jordan didn’t cry but nevertheless Zillah slept badly. Yawning and rubbing her eyes, she remembered to phone her mother in the morning, was told her father was “comfortable” and would probably be having a bypass at the end of the following week. At just after eight she started the drive home in heavier traffic than she’d ever experienced, and it was past eleven when she drove into the Abbey Gardens Mansions car park.

Once in the flat she phoned Mrs. Peacock. Would she have the children? Take them somewhere for lunch and then maybe to the zoo or Hampton Court or something? Please. She’d pay her double her usual rate. Mrs. Peacock, who’d spent a lot more than she’d meant to while in the Netherlands, readily said yes. Zillah rang the porters, told them she wasn’t to be disturbed on any account, unplugged the phones, and fell into bed.

The quest for his children Jeff might have postponed for a while had it not been for Fiona’s urging. It must have been seeing his dilemma down in black and white in the newspaper that affected her, for she’d spent most of Monday evening encouraging him to arrange a meeting with Zillah, demand to see his children, and, if such attempts failed, consult her solicitor. Jeff knew it wasn’t the plain sailing it seemed to her. Too much of this sort of thing and his marital status would come out. He couldn’t exactly promise he’d free himself from Zillah, for how could you divorce a woman who’d already married someone else? How could he say he was a Catholic when he’d never mentioned it before?

On Tuesday he’d taken the Jubilee Line tube from West Hampstead to Westminster and walked down to Abbey Gardens Mansions. No one was at home in number seven and this time the head porter said he’d no idea where Mrs. Melcombe-Smith was. Someone must have warned him to be discreet, for he denied all knowledge of any children living in the flat. For all he knew, as he said afterward to his deputy, that chap might be a kidnapper or a pedophile.

It was a lovely day. Jeff sat on a seat in the Victoria Tower Gardens and called Natalie Reckman on his mobile. At first he got her voice mail, but when he rang again ten minutes later she answered.

Her tone was cordial. “Jeff! I suppose you read my piece in the magazine?”

“I didn’t need that to remind me,” he said. “I think about you a lot. I miss you.”

“How nice. All alone, are you?”

“You could say that,” Jeff answered carefully. “Have lunch with me. Tomorrow? Wednesday?”

“I couldn’t before Friday.”

He had the five hundred he’d won on Website. Unashamedly he said, “I’ll pay. Where shall we eat? You choose.”

She’d chosen Christopher’s. Well, he could use Zillah’s Visa card and hope he hadn’t already gone over its limit with the handbag he’d bought Fiona for her birthday and the roses for the six months’ anniversary of their moving in together. These cards should have their limit printed on them for the sake of people like him. He’d crossed the street and tried the Melcombe-Smith flat again, but Zillah still wasn’t in.

On Thursday, a bit recklessly, he’d backed a horse called Spin Doctor to win and it came in first. The odds had been long and he’d picked up a packet. Next day he went back to Westminster and got to Abbey Gardens Mansions just as Zillah and the children were coming off the M4 at Chiswick. He rang the bell, got no answer, made more inquiries of the porter, and was told the man didn’t know, he couldn’t keep tabs on all the residents, and no one expected him to. As it happened, Jims had gone down to his constituency on the previous afternoon, by chance passing Zillah outside Shaston. Neither saw the other.

Jeff wondered how he could consult a solicitor without its coming out that he was still married to Zillah. Dared he confess this to Natalie? Probably not. She was a very nice woman, clever and good-looking, but she was above all a journalist. He wouldn’t trust her an inch. The only person he could confess to was Fiona. As he wandered along the Embankment in the sunshine, he pondered the possibility of this. The danger was that she wouldn’t forgive him, she wouldn’t say something on the lines of “Darling, why didn’t you tell me sooner?” or “It doesn’t matter but you’d better set about it now,” but would throw him out of the house. She was strictly law-abiding, he’d never known such rectitude in a woman or man either, come to that. Whatever she advised or whatever she warned him about, she’d want those Melcombe-Smiths told the truth, she’d want to know his intentions. Jeff didn’t care much for Zillah, and he actively disliked Jims, but he stopped short at making her destitute and wrecking the man’s career. No, he couldn’t confess to anyone. Except perhaps to a solicitor? What he told such a person would be in confidence. There might be some way of serving divorce papers on Zillah without Jims or anyone else being any the wiser. But what about the children? Would it be possible to get a divorce without mentioning the children’s existence? After all, they didn’t need anyone to support them, they had Jims. One of those postal divorces . . .

With these thoughts rotating in his head, he bought himself a cup of coffee in the Strand, drank a half of bitter in a pub in Covent Garden, and arrived at Christopher’s at five to one. Natalie came in at five past. As always, she was severely dressed, this time in a gray pinstriped trouser suit, but with her upswept blond hair—she had that kind of stripy fair hair, gold and flaxen and light brown, that no dye can emulate and that Jeff admired—and discreet silver jewelry, she looked very fetching.

After some small talk and, in Jeff’s case, a lot of lies about his recent past, he grew mildly sentimental about what might have been.

“I don’t know about that,” said Natalie sharply. “You left me.”

“It was what they call constructive desertion.”

“They call it that, do they? And by that they mean, presumably, a certain amount of questioning on my part as to why I always paid the rent and bought the food?”

“I’d explained I was between jobs, you know.”

“No, you weren’t, Jeff. You were between women. Just in a spirit of enquiry, who came after me?”

Minty had. Looking back, Jeff thought he’d never sunk so low. But he’d been impoverished and desperate, living in that dump in Harvist Road. The Queen’s Head barmaid Brenda had told him Minty had her own house and a lot of money, her aunt had left her God knew how much. A quarter of what rumor said, if he knew anything about it, but as he’d put it to himself, any port in a storm. He might as well be more or less honest about it with Natalie.

“A funny little thing, lived up near Kensal Green Cemetery. I called her Polo because of her name.” He hesitated. “I don’t think I’ll tell you what that was. I owe her some money actually, only a thousand. Don’t look like that. I mean to pay her back as soon as I can.”

“You never paid me back.”

“You were different. I knew you could afford it.”

“You’re incredible, you really are. She came after me. Who was before me?”

The chief executive of a charity and a restaurateur, but he could leave them out. He’d told enough of the truth for one day. “My ex-wife.”

“Ah, the tarty Mrs. Melcombe-Smith. You should have cured her of decorating herself like a Christmas tree. I suppose she never had the chance while she was with you. Funny I remembered your children’s names, wasn’t it? I must have been fond of you.”

“I was hoping you still are.”

Natalie smiled as she finished her double espresso. “Up to a point, Jeff. But I’ve got someone, you see, and I’m very happy with him. You didn’t ask, though I asked you. Does that say something about us?”

“Probably that I’m a selfish bastard,” said Jeff cheerfully, though he wished she’d told him before he’d asked her to lunch and was on the way to forking out eighty pounds. One thing about Jeff, as women were to say later, was that he’d no false pride. He didn’t try to put himself on her level by mentioning Fiona.

“Where are you off to now?” she asked when they were out in Wellington Street.

“Movies,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d feeling like coming too?”

“You don’t suppose right.” She kissed him on the cheek, one cheek. “I’ve work to do.”

He’d told Natalie he was going to the cinema, but this was because it was the first thing that came into his head. It wasn’t what he’d intended. Revisiting Abbey Gardens Mansions was what he’d had in mind. But getting back to Westminster wouldn’t be easy from Kingsway. He’d done enough walking for one day and there was no bus or tube from here that went that way. A taxi with its light on came along and he almost stepped off the pavement and put up his hand. The driver began to pull in. Jeff thought of the money he’d spent on Natalie’s lunch and the credit card that was probably over its limit and shook his head. Thus he sealed his fate.

Or he almost sealed it. The seal was poised and it wavered above the hot fresh wax and he was given one more chance. At Holborn he got into a westbound Central Line tube train. As it approached Bond Street, he thought he might as well get off, change on to the Jubilee Line, and go home. But being at home on his own was something he’d never much cared for. He needed a woman there and some food and drink and entertainment. The train came into Bond Street and stopped, the doors opened, a dozen people got out and much the same number got in. The doors closed. Instead of proceeding, the train waited where it was. As usual there was no explanation for the delay offered over the public address system. The doors opened. Jeff got up, hesitated, sat down again. The doors closed and the train started. At the next station, Marble Arch, he got out.

He went up the steps, turned right, and made his way to the Odeon. One of the films showing was
The House on Haunted Hill.
He picked it because it started at three thirty-five and the time was now a quarter past three. For some reason, when he’d bought his ticket, he thought of what his mother used to say, that it was a shame to go to the pictures when the sun was shining outside.

Chapter 14

IT WOULD HAVE been more interesting, Minty sometimes thought, if the shirt colors and designs had been more varied. If there hadn’t been a preponderance of white ones, for instance, or if more had had button-down collars and pockets on them. She thought the white ones were getting more common; there must be a fashion for absolutely plain white shirts. This Friday morning it had meant ironing three white ones before she did a pink stripe and two more before coming to the blue with a navy stripe and button-down collar. She’d arranged them in order before starting. Just leaving it to chance was fatal. Last time she’d done that she’d ended up with six white ones and it was weary work getting through six shirts that all looked the same. Apart from being, in her estimation, unlucky. That morning, when she’d had the white ones left over, had been the last day she’d seen Jock, and it had to have something to do with the shirts being out of sequence.

His ghost had been in the hall when she’d got home last evening, standing there looking out for her, waiting for the sound of her key in the lock. She’d pulled up her sweatshirt, undone her trousers, and tugged the knife out of the strap that held it against her leg, but he’d slipped past her and run upstairs. Though she was shaking with fear, she’d run after him, chasing him into Auntie’s bedroom. Just as she’d thought she had him cornered he vanished through the wall, the way she’d heard spirits could but had never seen before. Auntie’s voice had said, “You nearly had him there, girl,” and said a lot more while Minty was having her bath, all about Jock being evil and a menace to the world, the cause of flood and famine, and the herald of the Antichrist, but it wasn’t the first time she’d said that and Minty knew it already. She was beginning to get as impatient with Auntie’s talking as she was with Jock’s appearances.

Drying her hair, strapping on the knife again, pulling on clean T-shirt and trousers, she shouted out as the voice persisted, “Go away! I’ve had enough of you. I know what to do!” She went on saying it as she went downstairs and heard the doorbell ring. Sonovia’s younger daughter, Julianna, the one who was at university, was outside.

“Were you talking to me, Minty?”

“I wasn’t talking to anyone,” said Minty. She hadn’t seen Julianna for about a year and only just recognized her, what with a gold stud in one nostril and her hair in about ten thousand braids. It made her shiver. How often could she wash it and how did she get that stud in and out? “Did you want something?”

“I’m sorry, Minty. I know you and Mum aren’t speaking, but now Mum wants her blue outfit back, she’s lost a lot of weight to get into it, and she’s going to wear it to a christening on Sunday.”

“You’d better come in.”

Serve her right if Jock came and talked to her, Minty thought as she went upstairs. Julianna might be one of those people who could see him. It would be a relief to get rid of the blue dress and jacket. In spite of dry-cleaning it twice, she couldn’t rid herself of the idea that it was still dirty and contaminating the house. “Polo, Polo,” Jock whispered to her as she went into Auntie’s room. He was still there, then, though she couldn’t see him any longer.

She’d zipped the outfit up inside a dry cleaner’s bag, taken it downstairs, and handed it over to Julianna. “It’s a bit gloomy in here,” Julianna said. “Why don’t you pull the curtains back?”

“I like it that way.”

“Minty?”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t come back with me, would you, and say hello to Mum and sort of make things all right? It’d really please my dad if you would. He says it gets up his nose not being on good terms with the neighbors.”

“Tell your mum,” said Minty, “it’s her fault, she started it. She can say she’s sorry and then I’ll start speaking.”

From the window she watched the girl go. She thought of all this while she was ironing and Josephine said, “Did you ever make it up with what’s-her-name that lives next door to you? The one that made all that fuss about her dress?”

“She’s called Sonovia.” Minty slipped the last white shirt but three into its plastic bag, tucked the cardboard collar round its neck, and took the last striped one from the pile. “Her husband came in here begging me to apologize but I said I’d nothing to apologize about, it was all her. It was all her, wasn’t it? You were there.”

“Of course it was. I’d say that in any court of law.” Josephine looked at her gold and rhinestone watch, a wedding present from Ken. “I tell you what, Minty, when you’ve finished that lot you can take the afternoon off if you want. And tomorrow morning. It’s only what you deserve, looking after the place while me and Ken were on honeymoon.”

Minty thanked her and managed a half-smile. She’d rather have had a raise but thought it was hopeless asking. The last three shirts were always a drag to do, but she’d finished them by five to one.

At home again, she took her second bath of the day, feeling fresh resentment against Jock when she thought how he’d done her out of the money she could have spent on a shower cabinet. Sometimes, while in the bath, she thought of the dirt that came off her floating about in the water and getting back on her again. The dirt from her body into her hair and the dirt from her hair on to her body. It might be the reason for her never feeling clean enough. Would she ever be able to afford a shower now?

She ate one of her clean hygienic lunches: carefully washed chicory leaves, a skinned chicken wing, six small boiled potatoes, two slices of white bread with good unsalted butter on them. Then she washed her hands. She’d spend her afternoon off at the cinema.

It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day. Even Kensal Green had smelled fresh and floral as she walked home from Immacue. Beyond the high wall, the trees of the cemetery made it look as if some verdant park lay behind. Auntie used to say it was a wicked shame going to the cinema on a fine day, you ought to be outside enjoying it. But she didn’t say it now, though Minty listened for her voice to come. Should she go to Whiteley’s or to the Odeon at Marble Arch? The Whiteley’s complex was nearer, but to reach it she’d have to go through one of the underpasses below the Westway. An underpass was just the sort of place Jock might be waiting for her and she didn’t want to see him today, she didn’t want him spoiling her time off. So Marble Arch on the 36 bus.
The House on Haunted Hill
was showing there and she quite liked the sound of it. Ghosts in a film weren’t frightening when you had a real ghost of your own.

Ages passed before the bus came, or it seemed like ages, though it was only ten minutes. As if making up for time, it raced along Harrow Road and down Edgware Road, dropping her off at the bottom at exactly three o’clock. By this time she was an old hand at buying her own ticket, showing it to the usher, and making her way alone to a seat. Ten people were sitting in the auditorium. Minty counted. She sat in a seat at the end of a row, so that no one could sit next to her on the right, and unless the place filled up, which it wouldn’t, nobody would choose to sit on her left. The present occupants of the cinema all looked older than she and were isolated except for a couple of pensioners, man and woman, seated in the very front row. She was pleased to find herself almost alone in the whole block of seats on the right-hand side. It was much better going to the cinema in the afternoon than with Laf and Sonovia in the evening.

The auditorium darkened and advertisements appeared on the screen. Minty had often before watched such commercials with puzzlement, for she understood not a word of them and not an image. The noise they made was loud and the voices that uttered incomprehensible words raucous, while music pounded and brilliant colors and explosive lights flashed across the screen. They were succeeded by something romantic and dreamy, accompanied by a soft sonata: the first trailer of films to come.

To her annoyance, a man had come in and was edging along the row in front of her. He probably couldn’t see where he was, the place was dark as pitch but for the pastel colors on the screen. He turned light-dazzled eyes in her direction and she saw it was Jock’s ghost. There seemed nowhere she could go where he wouldn’t follow her and haunt her. He wasn’t wearing his black leather jacket today, it was too warm for that, but a stripy shirt like one of those she’d ironed that morning and a linen jacket that looked new. Where did ghosts get new clothes from? She’d never thought of that before.

He sat down, not directly in front of her, but in the seat in front of the one next to hers, and took a packet of Polo mints out of his pocket. How long would he stay? Would he get up again and vanish through the wall as he’d done the night before in Auntie’s room? Minty was more angry than she’d been for a long time, perhaps than she’d ever been. Fear of him had almost gone, it was all anger now. He half-turned his head, then looked back at the screen. The romantic film trailer faded away and a violent one came on, the sort that shows high-powered cars in brilliant colors and blazing lights crashing into other cars and careering over precipices while maddened men crane out of their windows, firing guns. The ghost took a mint out of the packet and put it in his mouth. Carefully and silently Minty lifted her T-shirt, unzipped her trousers, and pulled the knife stealthily from its plastic sheathing and the strapping round her leg. She laid it on the seat beside her, zipped up her trousers, and pulled down her T-shirt. She thought she’d been quiet but she must have made a little sound.

Jock’s ghost turned round again, more fully this time. As he looked into her face in the dimness and the roaring noise, his eyes opened wide and he began to get to his feet as if he were afraid of her instead of her of him. More swiftly than she could have believed she’d do it, she snatched up the knife and, rising, thrust it into where she guessed his heart was. If a ghost had a heart, if a ghost could die.

He didn’t cry out, or if he did she couldn’t hear it above the car crashes and the guns and the beat of the music. No one could have heard anything with that noise going on. But maybe he hadn’t made a sound, perhaps ghosts didn’t. It took both hands to pull the knife out. There was something reddish brown on it that looked like blood, only it couldn’t be, ghosts didn’t have blood. It must be whatever ghosts had in their veins that made them able to walk and talk. Ectoplasm, maybe. Auntie had talked a lot about ectoplasm in her last years. Minty wiped the dirty knife on the upholstery of the seat next to her. It still wasn’t clean, of course it wasn’t, it would have to be put in a pan of water and the water brought to the boil before it was really clean. But there was no water here, no stove, and no gas. Shuddering, she unzipped her trousers and pushed the knife back against her leg, thankful for the plastic wrapping which kept it from contact with her skin.

Jock’s ghost had fallen to the floor and disappeared. Or at any rate, she couldn’t see what remained of it. She didn’t want to. And she didn’t care to remain where she was with the dirty stuff wiped off on the seat next to her, but she did want to see this film. Fastidiously, shrinking away from contact with that seat as she passed it, she moved to the aisle end of the row, walked a few yards up the aisle, and picked herself another seat. It was in the central block and there was no one in front of her and no one behind.