Connections (27 page)

Which made me wonder if the Brits were so keen not to hand Tallinn over to the Germans they'd decided to kill him. Which meant in turn the matter was very serious because, no matter what they say, murder is still not the British Secret Service's first choice when it comes to solving difficulties, unlike others we could mention. There's always an Inner Policy Club, a group of some sort of illuminati, and they might go too far, too soon, but those aside, the spooks do try hard not to go around killing people all over the place. This isn't America, after all.

Abandoning the paper due to faulty German, another bit of reading material caught my eye. Lying on a table was
Hello!,
open at a double page spread of a lot of well-dressed people in Barbados. And there on a terrace with sun and sky as a background was the girl in the photograph Hoppo had brought back from the cemetery in Cray Hill, the very picture which had startled Mr Robinson so much. It was her. “Reunited for Christmas, Fleur Jethro and her father Sir Richard exchange news on the terrace of Braganza House, the Andriades' retreat in the West Indies.
”

Here was a girl who apparently lived on a council estate, and worked behind the bar of a pub in Cray Hill, on holiday in the Caribbean with an immensely wealthy father. Maybe she'd wanted to make her own way in the world, I thought. Or maybe there'd been a row and she'd been chucked out, thus the term “reunited”. It was all a mystery, I thought, a mystery I would never solve. If only that had been true. I solved it all right, William, and it's put me into exile.

Fleur returned to Adelaide House the day after Boxing Day, still toting her Barbados luggage after a riotous Christmas at the Stadlens'. A dozen of them had eaten and drunk themselves to a standstill several times and recovered with noisy games of cards, charades and board games. Fleur earned much appreciation when she intercepted Jess's ten-year-old nephew as he charged the tree like a berserker on Christmas Eve. It was never established who had paid the boy to try.

When Fleur checked her answer machine there were no messages. She'd half expected some reproaches from Barbados and a message from Ben telling her when he'd reach London. The absence of any word from Ben confirmed her suspicion that he wasn't coming, was angry with her for leaving and might have decided to stay and play with his new rich friends. Probably her taking half the Atlanta money hadn't cheered him up much. This was depressing, but she put the thought away and went straight over to the Findhorn Star to ask Patrick if she could have some shifts. As it turned out, he needed her.

“You're back early, aren't you?” he asked. “How was the holiday?”

“Hot,” she told him.

He looked at her curiously, but said no more. He told her, “Two people came in asking for you before Christmas. One was a man and then there was a girl.”

“Who were they?” she asked.

“They didn't say,” he replied. “The girl left a Christmas card, but it got lost.”

Fleur, suspecting they might be debt collectors who had caught up with Verity Productions, asked no more and began putting glasses in the washer. In some ways she didn't regret leaving Barbados and her father behind, but she was worried, very worried. If Ben wasn't going to come back to help her settle things she was in a tricky position.

Jess's father had advised her to go to the firm's old accountant and ask for help. He'd added, “Send the bill to me. I'll pay it and you can pay me back when you can.” Touched by his offer, Fleur had agreed to see Gerry Sullivan as soon as possible, with or without Ben.

Since Patrick had now begun a new regime of producing pub meals Fleur worked an eight-hour shift at top speed, the Cray Hill residents evidently having decided that one more turkey meal was too many and descended in force for lasagnes and shepherd's pies. During her half-hour break she phoned Gerry Sullivan's office, which was closed, and left a message.

Next morning, as she was unpacking her bag, Dominic rang her doorbell and called out, “Will somebody open up in there, for God's sake?”

She opened the door and found him there, looking fit and cheerful, with Jason beside him wagging his tail. “You look well,” she said. “So does Jason.”

He came straight in and embraced her. “I've missed you, you know. I wished all the time you were there. But aren't you back a bit early? What happened?”

“It's a long story,” she said.

“We'd better lie down while you tell me,” he declared.

He still smelt of the sea. It had been a rough crossing and he brought to her a land of country vigour; she heard waves crash, saw bare trees against a skyline, walked a lane, crunching with frost.

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Ah – that's the stuff. That's the business. Why did I miss you so much? More important – did you miss me?”

“What happened to you?”

“Oh – the family. Joe and me built a fence for my uncle.
They'd killed a pig and a turkey. It was grand, being out there in the country. It wouldn't do forever, mind.”

“Any girls?”

“They tried to marry me to my cousin. But I left the offer on the table, as you say in your world. What happened to you?”

She told him about the place, the arrival of Ben, the offer of money, her escape. “So I spent Christmas at Jess's. Jess said I'd done the right thing by leaving. Surprise.”

“It looks like they were trying to give you everything you wanted, even a husband,” he said neutrally. She hadn't told him she'd slept with Ben, he hadn't asked, but they both knew she had and Dominic didn't like it.

“I'm glad to be back in Cray Hill,” she said, “and I never thought I'd say that.”

He seemed to push aside the idea of Ben. “So why did you say no to all that?”

“I've told you – I didn't want to be bought.”

“That's not the whole thing, though, is it?” he said.

Lying there with Dominic, content and detached, she said, “No – it was too much, too soon. Two days after I arrived, suddenly there's Ben, next day a big offer of money. I thought I was just being wet to be startled by all this, and scared. I thought somebody with a bit of gumption would have just grabbed it, made something of it. But even Jess said it was too quick. It's like – they were desperate. My father was desperate. He must want a child who isn't on drugs or isn't living far away and won't come back. Probably his only fault was trying too hard. He's used to getting what he wants, when he wants it.”

“You're probably right,” Dominic said, not convinced.

“To hell with them,” said Fleur.

“Including Ben?” he asked.

“I don't know about Ben.”

“Tell me when you do.”

Fleur's phone rang. She got up to answer it.

“Fleur – it's Robin. I'm surprised you're back already. We're just back from Portugal. I'm sorry not to have rung from there,
as promised. It was awkward. Of course, you're owed an explanation. Grace and I were wondering whether you were free to come down here?”

Fleur was reluctant. She would have to go by train, which would cost more than she wanted; the weather was awful and she would, having got Patrick to give her a shift at the Findhorn, be obliged to let him down straight away.

She was explaining to Robin when she saw Dominic signalling from the bedroom door. She put her hand over the receiver. “Joe's bought a van. I'll run you down,” he said.

Fleur thought. In a van the journey would take less than two hours each way, even allowing for bad traffic. She could be back for an evening shift at the Findhorn. “Now?” she asked.

“Whenever.”

“OK.”

She told Robin she could get a lift from a friend and be in Kent by lunchtime at the latest.

They got dressed and got into Joe's van, which still had Irish number plates and a basket of vegetables at the back.

“Didn't know you could drive,” she said to Dominic on the way out of London.

“I learned on the farm as a boy,” he said. “Then in the city, well – taking and driving away was what it was called, legally.”

“Have you got a licence?”

“Is the Pope a Jew?” he asked charily, cutting up a taxi driver.

Fleur had a lift and, she now realised with relief, a witness to what was going to occur at Bucknells, which she felt oddly nervous about. So, telling herself she couldn't have everything, she kept her fingers crossed on the journey, hoping there would be no point where Dominic got stopped and had to produce a driving licence.

Leading Dominic up the garden path at Bucknells, past the old yew, old lawn and the flower beds, now tidied and mulched, she could feel his cynical amusement at the picture of southern comfort he was seeing. She even turned, before she pressed the doorbell, to make sure he wasn't grinning openly. He was not.

Grace opened the door, Fleur stepped in. “This is Dominic,” she said. “He's a neighbour and he kindly gave me a lift down.”

“You've made good time,” Grace said. “Would you like some coffee?”

It was awkward, Fleur knew, having Dominic there when they were meant to be discussing family business – worse because it was family business connected with money, worse still perhaps because Dominic did not give the impression of having had the luxury of much family or money. Fleur didn't care.

They sat in the sitting-room talking about the journey. Then Grace said, “Jess told me you left Barbados early.”

“I got ill,” Fleur said and then, realising this was nothing but a childish bid for her mother's sympathy, added, “She must have told you why I left.”

Grace shook her head. “Really, Fleur,” she said in wild reproach.

Robin said, “Come out and see my workshop, Dominic,” and they left the room.

Fleur and her mother were now alone. “You tipped me into it, Mum,” Fleur said. “If you or Robin had called me back and told me how long you'd been getting my father's money, and how much, I wouldn't have felt so threatened.”

“Really, Fleur,” her mother said again, this time with some indignation. “Threatened? Who or what was threatening you?”

“I was in a strange place with people I didn't know. I didn't even have any fare back until Ben turned up. So I was trapped as far as I knew. Then an awful man who's supposed to be a relative and keeps on making passes at me, though he's married, came in when I had sunstroke and presented me with information about you and Robin receiving generous sums of money from this unknown father of mine – which I knew nothing about… What do you think I felt like?”

“I should have thought you might have felt rather privileged,” Grace said. “As it is, you must have upset your father very much, bolting away like that. What did Ben say?”

“He wasn't there most of the time,” Fleur told her mother. “Didn't Jess tell you? He'd gone on a cruise to St Lucia.”

“Oh – I don't know,” Grace said. “I really thought this holiday would do you good.”

Fleur sighed. “You aren't going to tell me about this money, are you?”

“I don't think I need to go into all the details,” her mother said. “You know now that Richard assisted in your support. Naturally: you're his child, he's a wealthy man.”

Fleur gave up. She knew she was never going to learn from her mother the extent of Dickie Jethro's financial contribution to all their lives. At any rate she was now about one hundred per cent certain he had never stopped the donations. Grace and her stepfather were Dickie Jethro's pensioners.

Grace said, “Once I was pregnant my career as a dancer was over. Richard knew that. I didn't want to explain all that to you. It might have implied you put a stop to my life as a dancer. How could I burden you with that?”

“I suppose so,” said Fleur. There was a grain of truth in what Grace said, and about a pound of omission.

Grace added, “Granny advised me very strongly to accept an allowance from Richard. That was what finally persuaded me.”

“It was the obvious thing to do,” Fleur said.

“I'm glad you see that, at last,” Grace said, an edge to her voice, “and – I won't say any more about it after this – but I do think you should think about your father's offer.”

“That's really between him and me, now,” said Fleur.

“Exactly – that's why I've said I'll make no further comment. Why don't you go out and see how your friend's getting on with Robin? What a remarkably handsome young man, by the way. He's your neighbour?”

“Yes. He's Irish,” said Fleur.

“I'd gathered that. What about Ben, by the way?”

“He may come back to Britain to help clear up the mess – or not. I don't know.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Grace.

“I'll go and see how Dominic and Robin are getting along,” Fleur said.

In Robin's workshop, large, well-windowed and kept warm by
a fan heater, Dominic and Robin were bent over a vice. Robin was saying, “You just have to twist it, very gently, persuade it almost, to the left. Yes – that's right. The trick is to get it in place fast.”

He quickly undid the vice, flashed a glue brush and, taking the bent strut, slotted both ends into the chair seat by his work bench.

“That's a lovely shape of chair,” Dominic said. “Traditional. Classic.”

“Thank God someone still wants them,” Robin said. “In fact everyone does these days. There's a shop in Guildford I supply. They can't get enough of them. I've been thinking of getting a bigger workshop.”

“You couldn't very well extend here,” Dominic said.

“I know,” Robin said. “It's a problem. The other being that the vicar wants me to replace some of the carved choir stalls and if I'm pumping out chairs I won't have the time.”

Fleur stepped outside to enjoy the familiar pleasures of the garden in winter, the dull green of grass, the skeletons of trees behind the wall at the back, tiny shoots of snowdrops just tipping through the black earth of the flowerbeds, waiting for the end of winter. She walked slowly back into the house.