Devices and Desires (49 page)

After a moment she went on: “Mrs. Amphlett kept me on after Caroline left home, even after the Brigadier passed on. But ‘passed on’ is hardly an appropriate euphemism for a soldier.
Perhaps I should say ‘was called to higher service,’ ‘recalled to the Colours,’ ‘promoted to glory.’ Or is that the Salvation Army? I have a feeling that it’s only the Salvation Army who get promoted to glory.”

He said: “Caroline did tell me that her father was a professional soldier.”

“She has never been a very confiding girl, but you seem to have gained her confidence, Mr. Percival. So now I call myself a housekeeper rather than a nanny. My employer finds plenty to keep me occupied even when she isn’t here. It would never do for Maxie and me to live here on board wages and enjoy ourselves in London, would it, Maxie? No indeed. A little skilled sewing. Private letters to be posted on. Bills to be paid. Her jewels to be taken to be cleaned. The flat to be redecorated. Mrs. Amphlett particularly dislikes the smell of paint. And, of course, Maxie has to be exercised daily. He never thrives in kennels, do you, my treasure? I wonder what will happen to me when Maxie is promoted to glory?”

There was nothing he could say to that, nor, apparently, did she expect him to. After a moment’s silence, during which she lifted the dog’s paw and rubbed it gently against her face, she said: “Caroline’s old friends seem very anxious to get in touch with her all of a sudden. Someone telephoned to ask for her only on Tuesday. Or was it Wednesday? But perhaps that was you, Mr. Percival?”

“No,” he said, and was amazed at the ease with which he could lie. “No, I didn’t telephone. I thought it better just to take my chance and call.”

“But you knew who to ask for. You knew my name. You gave it to Baggott.”

But she wasn’t going to catch him like that. He said: “I remembered it. As I said, Caroline did talk about you.”

“It might have been sensible to telephone first. I could have explained that she wasn’t here, saved you time. How odd that it didn’t occur to you. But that other friend didn’t sound like you. Quite a different voice. Scottish, I think. If you will excuse my saying so, Mr. Percival, your voice is without either character or distinction.”

Jonathan said: “If you don’t feel you can give me Caroline’s address, perhaps I’d better go. I’m sorry if I came at an inconvenient time.”

“Why not write a letter to her, Mr. Percival? I can let you have the writing paper. I don’t think it would be right to give you her address, but you can be confident that I will post on any communication that you care to trust to me.”

“She isn’t in London, then?”

“No, she hasn’t lived in London for over three years, and she hasn’t lived here since she was seventeen. But I do know where she is. We keep in touch. Your letter will be safe with me.”

He thought: This is an obvious trap. But she can’t make me write. There must be nothing in my handwriting. Caroline would recognize it even if I tried to disguise it. He said: “I think I’d rather write later, when I’ve more time to think what to say. If I post it to this address, then you can send it on.”

“I will do that with pleasure, Mr. Percival. And now, I expect, you will want to be on your way. Your visit may have been less productive than you hoped, but I expect you have learned what you came to learn.”

But she didn’t move, and for a moment he felt himself trapped, immobilized, as if the disagreeably soft and yielding cushions held him in a vise. He half-expected her to leap up and bar his way to the door, to denounce him as an imposter, to keep him locked in the flat while she telephoned the police or the porter. What then would he do: attempt to seize the keys
by force and make his escape, wait for the police and try to bluff his way to freedom? But the momentary panic subsided. She got to her feet and led the way to the door and, without speaking, held it open. She did not close it and he was aware that she was standing there, the dog shivering in her arms, both of them watching him leave. At the head of the stairs he turned to smile a final goodbye. What he then saw made him stand for a second immobile before he almost ran down the stairs and through the hall to the open door. He had never in all his life seen such concentrated hatred on a human face.

The whole enterprise had been more of a strain than Jonathan could have believed possible, and by the time he reached Liverpool Street he was very tired. The station was in the process of being rebuilt—“improved,” as the large displays designed to reassure and encourage proclaimed—and had become a clanging and confusing maze of temporary walkways and direction signs in which it was difficult to actually find the trains. Taking a false turn, he found himself in a glossily floored piazza and felt momentarily as disorientated as if he were in a foreign capital. His arrival that morning had been less confusing, but now even the station reinforced his sense of having ventured both physically and emotionally onto alien ground.

Once the journey had started he leaned back, his eyes closed, and tried to make sense of the day and of his conflicting emotions. But instead, and almost immediately, he fell asleep, and didn’t stir into consciousness until the train was drawing into Norwich station. But the sleep had done him good. He strode towards the castle car-park filled with renewed energy and optimism. He knew what he would do: drive at once to the
bungalow, and confront Caroline with the evidence and ask her why she had lied. He couldn’t go on seeing her and pretend not to know. They were lovers; they should be able to trust each other. If she was worried or frightened he was there to reassure and comfort her. He knew that she couldn’t have murdered Hilary. The very thought was profanation. But she wouldn’t have lied unless she was frightened. Something was dreadfully wrong. He would persuade her to go to the police, explain why she had lied and persuaded him to lie. They would go together, confess together. He didn’t ask himself whether she would want to see him or even whether, late on a Saturday, she would be at home. All he knew was that the matter between them had to be settled now. There was a rightness and an inevitability about his decision and he felt, too, a small surge of power. She had thought him a gullible and ineffectual fool. Well, he would show her that she was wrong. From now on there would be a subtle change in their relationship; she would have a more confident, less malleable lover.

Forty minutes later he was driving through the darkness across flat, undistinguished country towards the bungalow. Slowing down as it came into sight on his left, he was struck afresh by how remote and unattractive it was and wondered again why, with so many villages closer to Larksoken, with the attractions of Norwich and the coast, she should have rented this forbidding, almost sinister little box of crude red brick. And the very word “bungalow” seemed to him ridiculous, evoking a picture of suburban ribbon development, of cosy respectability, of old people who could no longer manage stairs. Caroline should live in a tower with a wide view of the sea.

And then he saw her. The silver Golf came out from the drive very fast and accelerated eastwards. She was wearing what looked like a woollen cap pulled down over her yellow
hair, but he knew her immediately. He didn’t know whether she had recognized him or the Fiesta, but instinctively he braked and let her get almost out of sight before he followed. And, waiting in the quietness of that flat landscape, he could hear Remus barking hysterically.

He was surprised how easy it was to keep her in sight. Sometimes another car passing him would obscure his view of the silver Golf, and occasionally, when she slowed for traffic lights or because they had reached a village, he had quickly to reduce speed in case she realized that he was on her tail. They passed through Lydsett Village and she took the right turn across the headland. By now he feared that she must have recognized him, must know that she was being followed, but she went on, apparently uncaring. When she had negotiated the gate, he waited until she was out of sight over the ridge before following, then stopped, put out the car lights and went a little way on foot. He saw that she was picking someone up; a slim girl with spiked yellow hair, orange at the tips, was briefly illuminated in the headlights. The car turned north along the coast road, inland at the power station, then north again. Forty minutes later their destination was known, the quay at Wells-next-the-Sea.

He parked the Fiesta beside the Golf and followed them, keeping Caroline’s blue-and-white cap in sight. They walked quickly, unspeaking, and neither of them looked back. At the quay he momentarily lost them, and then he saw that they were getting on a boat. And now was his chance; he had to speak to Caroline. He almost ran towards them. They were already on board. It was a small craft, no more than fifteen feet long, with a low central cabin and an outboard motor. Both girls were standing in the cockpit. As he came up Caroline turned to him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I want to talk to you. I’ve been following you since you left the bungalow.”

“I know that, you fool. You’ve been in my mirror practically the whole way. If I’d wanted to throw you off it wouldn’t have been difficult. You should give up this cloak-and-dagger business. It doesn’t suit you and you’re no good at it.”

But there was no anger in her voice, only a kind of irritated weariness. He said: “Caroline, I have to talk to you.”

“Then wait until tomorrow. Or stay where you are if you must. We’ll be back in an hour.”

“But where are you going? What are you doing?”

“For Christ’s sake, what do you think I’m doing? This is a boat, my boat. Out there is the sea. Amy and I are planning a short trip.”

Amy, he thought. Amy who? But Caroline didn’t introduce her. He said weakly: “But it’s so late. It’s dark and it’s getting misty.”

“So it’s dark and misty. This is October. Look, Jonathan, why don’t you mind your own business and get off home to Mother.”

She was busying herself in the cockpit. He leaned over and clutched the side of the boat, feeling the gentle rock of the tide. He said: “Caroline, please talk to me! Don’t go. I love you.”

“I doubt it.”

Both of them seemed to have forgotten Amy. He said desperately: “I know that you lied about your mother being ruined by Hilary’s father. That wasn’t true, any of it. Look, if you’re in trouble I want to help. We’ve got to talk. I can’t go on like this.”

“I’m not in trouble, and if I were you’d be the last person I’d turn to. And take your hands off my boat.”

He said, as if it were the most important thing between them: “Your boat? You never told me you had a boat.”

“There are a great many things that I didn’t tell you.”

And then, suddenly, he knew. There was no longer room for doubt. “So it wasn’t real, was it, any of it? You don’t love me, you never did love me.”

“Love, love, love. Stop bleating that word, Jonathan. Look, go home. Stand in front of your glass and take a good long look at yourself. How could you ever have supposed that it was real? This is real, Amy and me. She is why I stay at Larksoken and I am why she stays. Now you know.”

“You used me.”

He knew that he sounded like a querulous child.

“Yes, I used you. We used each other. When we went to bed, I was using you and you were using me. That’s what sex is. And, if you want to know, it was bloody hard work and it made me sick.”

Even in the throes of his misery and humiliation he could sense an urgency in her that had nothing to do with him. The cruelty was deliberate but it had no passion in it. It would have been more bearable if it had. His presence was merely an irritating but minor intrusion into more important preoccupations. Now the end of the rope had whipped clear of the bollard. She had started the engine, and the boat was edging away from the quay. And for the first time he really noticed the other girl. She hadn’t spoken since he arrived. She stood silently beside Caroline in the cockpit, unsmiling, shivering slightly, and somehow vulnerable, and he thought he saw on her childish face a look of puzzled compassion before his tears began to sting and the boat and its occupants became an amorphous blur. He waited until they were almost out of sight moving on the dark water, and then he made another decision. He would find a pub, have a beer and some food and be there when they returned. They couldn’t be away
long or they would miss the tide. And he had to know the truth. He couldn’t spend another night in this uncertainty. He stood on the quay staring out to sea as if the little boat with its two occupants were still in sight, then turned away and dragged his feet towards the nearest pub.

The throb of the engine, unnaturally loud, shook the quiet air. Amy half-expected doors to open, people to come running down to the quay, to hear protesting voices calling after them. Caroline made a movement, and the noise died in a gentle murmur. The boat gently moved away from the quay. Amy said angrily: “Who is he? Who is that creep?”

“Just a man from Larksoken. His name’s Jonathan Reeves. He’s unimportant.”

“Why did you tell him lies? Why did you tell him lies about us? We’re not lovers.”

“Because it was necessary. What does it matter anyway? It isn’t important.”

“It’s important to me. Look at me, Caroline. I’m talking to you.”

But still Caroline didn’t meet her eyes. She said calmly: “Wait until we get clear of the harbour. There’s something I have to tell you, but I want to get into deep water and I need to concentrate. Get up to the prow and keep a lookout.”

Amy stood for a moment irresolute, and then she obeyed,
working her way carefully along the narrow deck, clutching the rim of the low cabin roof. She wasn’t sure she liked the hold that Caroline apparently had over her. It was nothing to do with the money, which was paid irregularly and anonymously into her post-office account or left hidden in the abbey ruins. It wasn’t even the excitement and the secret sense of power which she gained from being part of a conspiracy. Perhaps after that first meeting in the pub at Islington, which had led to her recruitment to Operation Birdcall, she had subconsciously made a decision to give her loyalty and obedience, and now that the test had come she was unable to shake off that unspoken allegiance.