Deception on His Mind (17 page)

Connie Winfield stepped back from the shelf and admired the latest addition to her collection. She looked a little the worse for wear after her hours on the dance floor. And the beginnings of a ruination that the exercise had wrought upon her fresh hair-do from Sea and Sand Unisex had been finished by the heat.

At the lounge door, Rachel watched her mother. She noted the love bite on her neck and wondered who had done the honours: Seamus O'Callahan or Connie's regular swing partner, a bloke called Jake Bottom, whom Rachel had found in the kitchen the morning after the night her mother had met him. “Couldn't get his car started,” Connie had whispered confidentially to Rachel when her daughter had stopped short at the sight of Jake's hairless and heretofore unknown chest at the breakfast table. “Slept on the sofa, Rache,” to which remark Jake had raised his head and winked lewdly.

Not that Rachel had needed that wink to put two and two together. Jake Bottom wasn't the first man who'd had engine trouble at their front door over the years.

“They're something, aren't they?” Connie asked in reference to her collection of trophies. “Never thought your mum could trip the bright fantastic—”

The light fantastic, Rachel corrected her silently.

“—like she does, did you?” Connie eyed her. “Why's your mug all pinched up, Rachel Lynn? You didn't forget to lock the shop, did you? Rache, if you've gone and caused us a break-in, I'll crack you a good one.”

“I locked up,” Rachel said. “I double-checked to make sure.”

“Then what's up? You look like you're sucking on sour plums. And why'n't you using that make-up I bought you? God knows, you can do something with what you've got if you'd only work at it, Rache.” Connie crossed to her and fussily rearranged her hair, doing what she always did with it: pulling it forward so that wings of black fell like a veil against a good part of her face. Stylish this way, Connie would tell her.

Rachel knew that there was no point to informing Connie that rearranging her hair would do little to improve her overall appearance. Her mother had gone twenty years pretending that there was nothing wrong with Rachel's face. She wasn't likely to change her tune now.

“Mum …”

“Connie,” her mother corrected her. She'd decided upon Rachel's twentieth birthday that she couldn't abide being the mother of a budding adult. “We look more like sisters anyway,” she'd said when she'd first informed Rachel that they were to be Connie and Rache from that moment forward.

“Connie,” Rachel said.

Connie smiled and patted her cheek. “Better,” she said. “But put some colour on, Rache. You've got perfect cheekbones. Women die for cheekbones like you've got. Why'n't you use them, for God's sake?”

Rachel trailed Connie into the kitchen. She was squatting before the tiny refrigerator. She brought out a Coke and an oversize rubber band that she kept inside a plastic bag. The rubber band—five inches wide and two feet long—she slapped onto the kitchen table. The Coke she poured into a glass, adding two sugar cubes as she always did and watching the bubbles rise from them in a froth. She carried this drink to the table as well and kicked off her shoes. She unzipped her dress, stepped out of it, stepped out of her petticoats, and sat on the floor in her underwear. She had the body of a woman half her forty-two years, and she liked to show it off if there was the slightest indication of a compliment—fulsome or otherwise, Connie wasn't picky—being tossed her way.

Rachel did her duty. “Most women'd kill to have a stomach that flat.”

Connie reached for her rubber band and hooked it round her feet. She began alternately doing sit-ups and pulling the band—made more resistant by its time in the fridge—high above her head. “Well, it's all about exercise, isn't it, Rache?
And
eating right. And thinking young. How're my thighs? Not going dimply, are they?” She paused to lift a leg in the air, toe pointed heavenward. She ran her hands from her ankles to her garters.

“They're fine,” Rachel said. “In fact, they're perfect.”

Connie looked pleased. Rachel sat at the table as her mother continued to exercise.

Connie puffed. “Isn't this heat the worst? I s'pose that's why you're up so late. Couldn't sleep? I'm not surprised. It's a wonder to me you
ever
sleep, all done up like a Victorian granny. Sleep in the nude, girl. Liberate yourself.”

“It's not the heat,” Rachel said.

“No? Then what? Some laddie got your knickers all in a twist?” She began her leg splits, grunting slightly. Her long-nailed fingers kept count of the repetitions, tapping against the linoleum floor. “You're not putting out without protection, are you, Rache? I told you how you got to insist that the bloke wears a rubber. If he won't wear a rubber when you tell him to wear a rubber, then you give him the shove. When I was your age—”

“Mum,” Rachel cut in. It was ridiculous to talk about insisting on rubbers. Who did her mother think she was, anyway? The reincarnation of Connie herself? Connie had had to drive men off with a cricket bat from her fourteenth birthday, to hear her tell it. And nothing was dearer to her heart than the idea of having a daughter who was faced with the same “inconvenience.”

“Connie,” Connie corrected her.

“Yeah. I meant Connie.”

“I'm sure you did, love-boodle.” Connie winked, changed her position to lie on her side, and began sideways lifts with her arms thrown over her head. One thing about Connie that Rachel admired was her single-minded dedication to an objective. It didn't really matter what the moment's objective was. Connie gave herself to it like a young girl becoming the bride of Christ: She was the picture of complete devotion. This was a fine attribute in competitive dancing, in exercising, even in business. At the moment, however, it was also an attribute that Rachel could have done without. She needed her mother's undivided attention. She screwed up her courage in order to request it.

“Connie, c'n I ask you something? Something personal? Something about your insides?”

“My insides?” On the floor, Connie raised an eyebrow. A drop of perspiration trickled from it, glittering like a liquid jewel in the kitchen light. “You wanting to know the facts of life?” She puffed and chortled, leg lifting and falling. Her cleavage was beginning to slick with sweat. “Bit late for that, i'n't it? Didn't I see you going between the beach huts with some bloke more ’n once at night?”

“Mum!”

“Connie.”

“Right. Connie.”

“Didn't know I knew about that, did you, Rache? Who was he, anyway? Did he do bad by you?” She sat, draped the band round her shoulders, began to pull it forward and release it, working on her arms. The patch of damp she'd left on the lino looked vaguely the shape of an upended pear. “Men, Rache: You got to forget about trying to read their minds or control their doings. If you both want the same thing, then go ahead and have yourselfs some fun. If one of you doesn't, forget the whole thing. And always keep fun just that, Rache: fun. And use protection because you don't want any little surprises after the fact, with legs or without them. The surprises, that is. That's how I've lived and it's served me fine.” She watched Rachel brightly, as if waiting for the next probing question or a girlish admission prompted by her own womanly candour.

“It's not about insides like that,” Rachel said. “It's about your real insides. Your soul and your conscience.”

Connie's expression wasn't encouraging. She looked utterly baffled. “You getting religion?” she asked. “Did you talk to those Hare Krishnas last week? Don't look so innocent. You know the ones I mean. They were dancing round by Princes Breakwater, beating on their tambourines. You must've ridden by on your bike. Don't tell me you didn't.” She went back to her arm pulls.

“It's not about religion. It's about right and wrong. That's what I want to ask you about.”

Clearly, these were deeper waters. Connie dropped the rubber band and pulled herself to her feet. She took a large gulp of Coke and reached for a packet of Dunhills that lay in a plastic basket in the centre of the table. She eyed her daughter warily as she lit up and inhaled, holding the smoke in her lungs for a moment before exhaling a stream of it in Rachel's direction. “What've you been up to, Rachel Lynn?” She'd become all mother in an instant.

Rachel was actually grateful for the change. She felt buoyed momentarily as she had been in childhood at those moments when Connie's maternal instincts battled their way past her natural indifference to the calls of motherhood.

“Nothing,” Rachel said. “It's not about doing right or wrong. At least not really.”

“Then what?”

Rachel hesitated. Now that she had her mother's attention, she wondered how it was going to serve her. She couldn't tell her everything—she couldn't tell
anyone
everything—but she needed to tell someone just enough so that the someone might give her advice. “Suppose,” Rachel said delicately, “suppose something bad happened to a person.”

‘Okay. I'm supposing.” Connie smoked, looking as thoughtful as one could hope to look in a black strapless bra, matching knickers cut high on the thigh, and a lace suspender belt.

“This is a seriously bad thing that happened. And suppose you know something that might help people understand why this bad thing happened in the first place.”

“Understand why?” Connie said. “Why does anyone need to understand why? Bad things happen to people all the time.”

“But this is a real bad thing. This is the worst.”

Connie inhaled again, eyes on her daughter speculatively. “The worst, eh? Now, what could that be? House burnt down? Winning lottery ticket got tossed in the rubbish? Wife ran off with Ringo Starr?”

“I'm being serious,” Rachel said.

Connie must have seen the anxiety in her daughter's face, because she pulled out a chair and lowered herself into it, joining Rachel at the table. “Okay,” she said. “Something bad happened to someone. And you know why. Is that right? Yes? So what's this something, then?”

“Death.”

Connie's cheeks puffed out. She took up her cigarette and drew on it deeply. “Death, Rachel Lynn. What're you on about?”

“Someone died. And I—”

“You mixed up in something nasty?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Mum, I'm trying to explain. I mean, I'm trying to ask you—”

“What?”

“For help. For advice. I need to know if when a person knows something about a death, that person should tell the whole truth no matter what. If what a person knows may not have anything at all to
do
with that death, then should that person hold back on telling what she knows if she's asked what she knows in the first place. Because I know that the person doesn't need to say anything if no one asks her. But on the chance that she
is
asked, should she say something if she isn't sure it could be of help?”

Connie looked at her as if she'd just sprouted wings. Then her eyes narrowed. Despite Rachel's rambling presentation, when Connie next spoke, it was clear that she'd made some sophisticated leaps of comprehension. “Is this a sudden death we're talking of, Rache? Is this death unexpected?”

“Well. Yeah.”

“Is it unexplained?”

“I s'pose so. Yeah.”

“Is it recent?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it local?”

Rachel nodded.

“Then is it …” Connie stowed her cigarette between her lips and rooted in a stack of newspapers, magazines, and post that lay beneath the plastic basket from which she'd taken her cigarettes. She looked at the front page of one
Tendring Standard,
discarded it in favour of another, discarded that in favour of a third. “This?” She tossed the paper in front of Rachel. It was the one reporting the death on the Nez. “D'you know something about this, my girl?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Come on, Rache. I've not gone blind. I know you're thick with the coloureds.”

“Don't say that.”

“Why? You never made a secret that you and Sally Malik—”

“Sahlah. Not Sally. And I didn't mean don't say I'm thick with them. I meant don't call them coloured. It's ignorant.”

“Well,
pardon
me.” Connie tapped her cigarette against an ashtray. This was shaped like a high-heeled shoe, with the heel a resting spot for the fag. Connie didn't use this, since to use it meant to forego a few lungfuls of smoke, which was something she was clearly loath to do at the moment. She said, “You best tell me direct what's got your knickers knotted, girl, because I'm not up to playing mind games tonight. Do you know something about this bloke's death?”

“No. Not exactly, that is.”

“So you know something unexactly. That it? You know this bloke personal?” The question, once asked, seemed to push a button of some sort, because Connie's eyes widened and she stubbed out her cigarette so quickly that she upended the ashtray onto the table. “Is
this
the bloke you were going between the beach huts with? God Almighty, were you letting some coloured man do you? Where's your sense, Rachel? Where's your decency? Where's your value of yourself? D'you think a coloured man would ever give two figs if he put you in the club?
Not
bloody likely. And if he gave you one of those coloured diseases? What then, girl? And what about some virus? What's it called? Enola? Oncola?”

Ebola, Rachel corrected her silently. And it had nothing to do with getting poked by a man—white, brown, black, or purple—between the beach huts in Balford-le-Nez. “Mum,” she said patiently.

“Connie
to you. ConnieConnieConnie!”

“Yes. Right. No one's poking me, Connie. D'you actually think that anyone—no matter his colour—would want to poke me?”

“And whyever not?” Connie demanded. “What's wrong with you? With a beautiful body and fabulous cheekbones and wonderful legs, why wouldn't some bloke want to have his way with Rachel Lynn Winfield every night of the week?”

Rachel could see the desperation in her mother's eyes. She knew it would be pointless—worse, it would be unnecessarily cruel—to wring an admission of the truth from Connie. She was, after all, the person who had given birth to the baby without a proper face. That would probably be as difficult a reality to live with as it was to live with the face itself. She said, “You're right, Connie,” and felt a quiet despair settle over her, like a net whose webbing was composed of sorrows. “But this bloke on the Nez? I didn't do it with him.”