It Had to Be You (29 page)

‘All the way.’

‘Thank you.’

James endured Dwight’s global handshake, and rather enjoyed being allowed to place a soft kiss on each of Claire’s lovely soft cheeks, and then they were gone, and he began to move to the edge of the garden in order to take a deep breath, as if he was an otter breaking the surface to take a gulp, and there was Marcia steaming down on him. His mother’s phrase, There’s no peace for the wicked, came to him and he thought, Oh, God. Mum. I mustn’t neglect her.

But Marcia was first in the roll of duty.

‘Hello, Marcia, you look very glamorous.’

No!!

‘Thank you. I took ages working out what to wear. I don’t have much dress sense.’

Don’t draw attention to it.

‘Nonsense.’

‘I tried to look, as I know you wanted, not too drab and glum.’

‘You’ve succeeded.’

‘Without looking tarty.’

Sadly, you could never do that.

‘And I know of course I’ll see you in the office during the rest of my month’s notice.’

Oh, God.

‘But, James, I want to say, when all this has … well, you know … but … in time … when you’ve … you know … because, I mean, at first you’ll be … you know … devastated. I mean, I remember how I felt when Ronald died … and he was only a hamster … what I’m saying is … you know where I live, you have my number, I’ll be there.’

‘At the end of the phone?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Thank you, Marcia. Thank you very much. How’s the … how’s Willy the Wombat coming on?’

‘He’s coming along pretty well. I’m getting lots of ideas. I thought he might be employed by the UN to save the world from a great crisis. Or he might lead all the animals in London Zoo in a big revolution type of thing. He might have amazing powers and get called Superwombat. I mean, I haven’t really got going on it yet. I think early on an author has to explore all the parameters.’

‘Great. That sounds wonderful. I can see you holding court in the Ivy in years to come.’

‘Do you mean that?’

He realised, to his amazement, that he did. Who could tell? He felt a wave of true affection for this sunburnt, shapeless young woman. He felt an urge to say something really affectionate, something to give her hope. He resisted it.

‘Well, keep at it,’ he said. ‘I must go and find my mum, Marcia. Duty calls.’

He kissed her on both cheeks.

James didn’t know it, but his long day’s journey towards his mum was going to be interrupted by several more encounters.

He felt that he had seen her before. You wouldn’t have described her as beautiful. The word ‘pretty’ wouldn’t have come instantly to mind. Attractive? Yes, well, very definitely if one thought of it as opposed to unattractive, but even then, while she was attractive, you wouldn’t necessarily have described her as such. When he thought about her, later that evening, after she had gone, James found himself using a very odd word. She was complete.

She was talking to a couple of the Glebeland girls, just in the garden, but close to the back door, and he remembered where he had seen her – in the photograph of all the Glebeland girls that he had found. He would have to pass her to enter the house to find Mum. Their eyes met for just a moment, it was nothing dramatic, just a brief connection. She turned away from the other two girls, and he suddenly knew who she was. She was Grace Farsley, the girl who got away, went to Rangoon or somewhere, married a tea planter or something equally Victorian, was never seen again. Deborah had lost all contact with her, had regretted it often, had asked the other girls about her, some of the other girls hadn’t liked her, had thought her stand-offish, Deborah had thought only that she was reserved, Deborah had really liked her, and Deborah had almost never been wrong about people (except Constance Thrabnot, but we needn’t go into that).

‘It’s good to meet you. Deborah often spoke of you.’

‘Really?’

‘She wondered what had happened to you. She longed to see you again.’

‘Well, I’m amazed. Well, that’s … well, it’s nice, in a way, but it’s also rather awful. Because now I feel so sad that I never will. I haven’t been back in England that long, and I had no way of contacting her either. And then on Saturday I saw the announcement of her death in the paper. I was devastated. I was very close to her once. So of course I felt that I must come.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘I thought you were wonderful today, James. Yes, yes, I can see it on your face. You’re ashamed you couldn’t see it through. Honestly, James, when that vicar’s voice has faded into oblivion, I’ll still remember the true emotion of that moment.’

‘Yes, Grace, I’ll agree there. It was true.’

‘I think Deborah was very lucky.’

Oh, Grace, Grace, did you have to say that? Oh, the burden of my secret.

‘So you … um … didn’t you … this sounds terribly Somerset Maugham … marry a tea planter and go to Rangoon?’

‘I married a surveyor and went to Penang. The humidity turned the surveyor sour and he became cruel to me. That was a bit Somerset Maugham.’

‘You didn’t keep up with the Glebeland girls?’

‘For a while. I liked them, but there was a problem. I hated Glebeland, and they all loved it. Well, it’s nice to meet you.’

She shook his hand and turned back to the girls, but it didn’t seem like a rebuff.

He walked along the corridor that led into the house from the garden, just as Mike came out of the living room. There they were, face to face. He hadn’t even noticed Mike in the church. In fact, so much had been going on in his emotional life that he had completely forgotten about Mike and his hardening suspicions. But now, coming face to face with him so unexpectedly, he was utterly shocked. He was shocked to see him looking smart, wearing a jacket and tie, his hair neatly brushed and almost certainly washed. He was shocked at his certainty that, respectable though Mike looked now, he was a murderer. He came out in goose pimples all over his skin, and he flinched instinctively.

And Mike saw him flinch.

Mike stood stock-still. He looked at James in astonishment. Their eyes couldn’t avoid each other’s, and there wasn’t time for the eyes to hide their messages.

‘You know!’ breathed Mike in startled amazement.

‘I do now,’ said James in a low voice, trying not to sound grim.

Just five words, and nothing would ever be the same between them again. Mike came towards him, and it was all James could do to avoid flinching again. But Mike walked straight past him, out to the garden. James leant against the wall of the corridor, momentarily too weak to stand unaided. For a moment he thought he would pass out, then he knew that he wouldn’t. His heart was slowing down. He became capable of movement again.

He went out into the garden, searching for Mike, though not knowing what he intended to say if he found him.

But Mike was nowhere to be seen.

It took him a while to pull himself together. It took a while before he felt capable of plunging back among his guests. He walked tentatively, almost shyly, into his own living room.

Surely nothing more would tear him apart today?

A woman whom he didn’t know immediately detached herself from a group of Harcourts and buttonholed him.

‘I’m Dorothy Harcourt,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ he said meaninglessly. He didn’t think that he had ever heard of her.

‘I’m one of the Gloucestershire Harcourts.’

‘Well, how do you do? How are things in Gloucestershire?’

Careful, James. But there was something about this woman, something to make you want to be sarcastic, something to make the flesh crawl.

‘I have something to tell you. I wondered whether I should tell you or not.’

‘Obviously you decided that you would.’

Her skin was the colour of Wensleydale cheese, her hair clung limply to her scalp as if frightened of sliding off, but in her eyes there was glittering, ferocious life. James felt instinctively alarmed by her inner fires.

‘I decided that I must tell you for your own good.’

‘Why does that alarm me so much?’

‘I have a slight psychic gift, I put it no higher than that. I don’t wish to have it, it can be disturbing. I sense, James, that you are a troubled soul. I smell guilt.’

‘I really don’t know where this is leading.’

She smiled smugly. It was a smile to curdle milk. This was a very sad soul, and, unlike most sad souls, there was something about the woman that repelled all sympathy.

‘I know men. Perhaps I should rephrase that. I know of men. I sense – correct me if I’m wrong – that you have been … disloyal? … unfaithful? … in some way. I sensed it in your eulogy … your very moving eulogy. I sensed that you were about to admit to something, and couldn’t.’

‘Perhaps you could speed this up a bit, tell me where it’s leading. There are lots of people here that I wish to speak to.’

‘Of course. I am just explaining why I think what I have to tell you may make you feel better. Your wife was not the saint that she is usually painted.’

James tried to look unconcerned. He didn’t want to give this woman the satisfaction of knowing how much she was disturbing him. But he could feel the blood, which had only recently returned to his face after the shock of his confrontation with Mike, draining away again, and a spasm of hideous pleasure crossed the woman’s face as she saw this.

‘Oh?’

‘I was lunching with a friend …’ James saw in her eyes a hint of the wild hatred that was consuming her. ‘… Well I
thought
she was a friend … in a hotel near Diss last Wednesday. The day that Deborah died.’

‘Go on.’

‘Your brother was lunching there too.’

Suspicion hardened instantly into certainty.

‘He was clearly waiting for somebody.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘He kept looking towards the door. It wasn’t at all an interesting door.’

As Dorothy talked on, James couldn’t avoid casting a quick glance round the room. He saw Philip, looking at him rather anxiously, and tried to give him a reassuring smile. Beyond Philip he saw Charles. The great man was leaning on the piano, as if to remind people who he was. He was holding court, in his usual genial way. He always claimed to be embarrassed by the attentions of his fans, but in that moment James realised that he loved them, that he thirsted for them and drank them. This vicious, nosey, wretched, lonely, twisted woman was telling him how she had ‘happened’ to look into the hotel’s visitors’ book, how somebody called Mr J. Rivers had booked in and given an absurd address that was clearly false. ‘I’m certain it was him. There wasn’t anyone else it could have been.’

James disliked this woman so much that he could hardly get the words ‘thank you’ out, and indeed he didn’t know whether he was grateful or not. He moved off, making his way past Roger Dodds and the Hammonds – no sign of Mike – and past a little bunch from the Kilmarnock factory. He could see that they wanted to speak to him, he didn’t want to offend them, God, social responsibilities were wearing. ‘See you in a minute,’ he said as he went past them.

Philip was approaching him. He didn’t want to speak to Philip just now.

‘She’s told you, hasn’t she?’ said Philip.

‘What?’

‘That woman. That dreadful woman. She’s told you.’

James was astounded.

‘You know about it?’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Philip looked puzzled for just a moment, then ploughed on. ‘I’m sorry, James. Sorry that you’ve had to find out. I don’t see why you ever had to know, not now that she’s dead.’

James had been so certain about Charles that realisation was dawning only very slowly.

He stared wildly at Philip.

‘You! It was you?’

‘Well, what did you think? Didn’t she tell you?’

‘She only said, “your brother”.’

‘Charles? You thought it was Charles? Oh, James. Is there somewhere we can talk?’

‘Our bedroom. My bedroom.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘Deborah’s bedroom.’

In the bedroom, James stood looking out over the apparent normality of Islington. He felt shredded.

Philip came in very slowly.

‘So you thought she was talking about Charles?’ he said, shaking his head as if he still didn’t quite believe it.

‘I’d begun to think he was in love with Deborah.’

‘Oh, I think he was, but I think he could only express it in music. I don’t think Charles is a very sexual person.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, I hate to say this, I’m very fond of them both, but Valerie doesn’t look like a satisfied woman. Music is a life substitute for Charles, which is why despite his great success he isn’t really happy.’

‘Charles isn’t happy?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I feel as though I understand nothing. I feel as though I’m swimming in fog. So it was you!’

‘You still sound surprised. Even at this very serious moment in our relationship I feel slightly piqued that you don’t think of me as sexy. I do have four children, James. Four more than Charles, as it … no, don’t go there.’

They were circling round each other, waiting for the moment to pounce.

James pounced first.

‘How could you, Philip? How could
you
?
You.
Of all people.’

‘Oh, God, James. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s a bit late for that.’

‘Well, I’m not honestly sure I am, anyway. I mean, I can’t honestly say I wish it hadn’t happened. I was in love with her, James.’

‘Did you go to bed with her?’

‘No.’

‘But would you have done … that day?’

‘Who knows? I certainly don’t.’

‘Well, how long had this been going on? Come on. Tell me.’

‘Not long. We had a couple of meals when you … you know … were away with … her.’

James felt the floor shift beneath his feet. So it really did happen.

‘You knew about Helen?’

‘Is that her name? Yes. We knew there was someone.’

‘Deborah knew?’

It was a scream of astonishment and pain. James’s legs began to give way. He tottered onto the bed where he had slept with Deborah for more than twenty years.