The Birthday Present (19 page)

No one else knows about the scrapbook. But when you come to think of it, who is there who could know? I don't really know anyone except Gerry and my mother and the girls. Grania, I mean, and Lucy and Wendy. And of course I know Gerry's mother and my tenant, Pandora Flint. That's quite a respectable list of friends, isn't it? Except that none of them are my friends. I thought Gerry would be. I hoped Gerry and I would grow closer as time went on, but we haven't really. We did for a while, when he talked to me about Hebe, how he missed her and how wonderful she was, and I listened and said yes and no and of course. But that didn't go on for long. It went on for months and then it stopped. Instead of talking about something else he just stopped talking. This was partly because Justin started staying up later. He wouldn't go to sleep at six—he got into the way of wanting someone to sit with him—so Gerry let him stay up till eight. I don't agree with it. I think children need their sleep and grown-ups certainly need a bit of peace. Gerry says he never gets a chance to talk to his son unless he lets him stay up later and, of course, he is the boss, he makes the rules. As for me, I talk about Callum less than I did. Maybe Gerry doesn't believe in him anymore. A real boyfriend would phone, wouldn't he? He'd call for me. And there's another difficulty. If you have an imaginary friend—because, let's face it, that's what Callum is—you always know he's imaginary unless you're mad, and you lose interest in him, you forget to talk about him, and worse, you forget what you said about him before. Gerry looked suspicious when I said Callum was thirty-one and I realized I'd taken a year off the age he was a year ago. He asked me if I was sure of that when I said he lived in Kensington.

But to get back to the scrapbook and Ivor Tesham. Or, rather, to get back to Ivor Tesham. The scrapbook can look
after itself, it's locked in a safe-deposit box in my tiny cell, and it's not even very interesting, just a man's political life in journalese and illustrations. But it's his private life as well. There are several photographs of him with his new love, his bosomy girlfriend who rejoices in the unlikely name of Juliet Case and calls herself an actress, though what she has
acted
in is a mystery to me and, I suspect, to everyone else. Tesham didn't wait long. He wasn't faithful to Hebe's memory for more than a few months. I sometimes wonder—no, I often wonder—what Gerry would think if he knew there was a man out there in the world, a man also in London, though in a rather different part of it from this dump, a man who was Hebe's lover but who forgot her once she was dead.

Juliet Case is also a bit different. From Hebe, I mean. At any rate, whatever else she may have been, Hebe was beautiful, ethereal-looking, delicate, fair as a lily (as Gerry often says), while this woman looks as if she ought to be at a bullfight with a rose between her teeth. Carmen, no less. I wonder too how much she knows about that Friday evening, about the crash, if she knows anything. I have thought about it to the point of exhaustion. The cuttings that half fill the scrapbook have given me some help. I have read and reread the pieces that describe the crash and looked again and again at the photographs. A few days after it happened and when the police thought Kelly Mason was the intended victim, they were looking for the man who was behind it all, the man who organized it and set it up. Then we heard no more about it till last week, when an article appeared that resurrected the whole thing and said the police were still looking for this
mastermind.
It is over two years in the past but they are still looking.

The article didn't name this man. It named Lloyd Freeman and Dermot Lynch and it said Lynch was a motor mechanic who serviced MPs' cars. Ivor Tesham doesn't just have a government car; he has one of his own, a big BMW. One of the photographs in the scrapbook shows him getting into this car outside his flat in Westminster. Suppose Dermot Lynch used to service this car? It's very likely. The conclusion I drew from working this out made me feel very excited. It could mean that the only person in the world who knew both Lloyd Freeman and Dermot Lynch was Ivor Tesham. He was the mastermind.

Of course I can't be sure of this, but isn't it the only possible answer? Ivor Tesham didn't intend to drive the BMW to pick up Hebe or send another driver in the BMW to pick her up, but paid Dermot and Lloyd to do it in a rented car, so that she could be
delivered
to him like a sexy parcel from a mail order company, dressed in absurd gear, flung down, I suppose, on his bed to await him. That's how it has to be. That's why he asked me that question: “What are you going to do?” I can see the fear in his face now, I can smell it, but what he was afraid of I don't exactly know. A story in the papers? Can anyone be so conscious of his reputation that he's afraid of a few lines on a diary page making him look faintly ridiculous? Apparently, he can.

No one seems to know what has happened to Dermot Lynch. It's said that the police never give up on a case like that. None of it gets in the media because quiet persistent work behind the scenes, searching, sifting, considering, isn't the hot news the press likes. Sometimes when I look through the scrapbook at the picture of Ivor Tesham and Carmen at his friend's wedding or the picture of him grinning, one fist raised, when he retained his seat at the general
election, I imagine myself walking into the nearest police station and telling them about that single meeting I had with him. And how he asked me what I was going to do.

One picture I shan't be putting in the scrapbook, and that's the one I found in the back of Hebe's jewelry drawer.

W
E DEPEND ON
the television in this household. I don't particularly care for it, I never have, but Justin loves it, as all children do, and Gerry watches it compulsively. I used to think he was an intelligent man but I've had to revise my opinion. He and Justin sit on the sofa—I sit in an armchair—and watch program after program with no discrimination whatsoever. Well, I shall correct that. If anything very horrible comes on, battles and corpses—they don't seem to mind showing dead bodies anymore—he doesn't turn it off, he changes channels. There used to be a phrase current when I was a child: “Glued to the glowing cathode.” I think that was quite clever, it was so apt. Gerry will change to anything Justin may want to watch, the most banal cartoons or pop music rubbish, but if I dare to ask for something
marginally
more intellectual, he always says Justin wouldn't like it or it wouldn't be suitable for Justin. I have actually said in reply that in that case I'll go and watch it on the set in the kitchen and, outrageous as it seems, he hasn't said a word to stop me. Usually it ends in my going upstairs to work on the scrapbook, writing captions to some of the pictures and putting names to the people with Tesham and Carmen in some classy venue.

So when the television broke down a couple of weeks ago I was rather pleased than otherwise. At least it would mean we might have a proper conversation in the evenings, Gerry talking to his son, which he was supposed to want to do
when he started letting him stay up late. Or we could even listen to the radio. But things happened differently. The man who came to repair the set said he would have to take it away and it might be gone for at least a week. You would have thought the end of the world had come. The black-and-white set in the kitchen would have to be brought into the living room, Gerry said. Never mind that my daytime viewing would be at an end or my alternative viewing in the evening.

I don't know what made me say what I did. Or, rather, I do know, I know only too well. It's the way I am, the way I act. Bluntly, brutally, I want them to love me—well, to like me, for that's all I can expect. It hasn't been allowed to happen. How could it when Gerry is always telling Justin how wonderful his mother was, showing him her picture, telling him in a soppy outdated way that his mother is in heaven, loving him and watching over him? I'd hoped Gerry would—well, perhaps not love me, I gave up on that long ago, but at least grow fond of me, tell me again that I was indispensable. But there are no signs he feels any different toward me than he did when first I came. None at all. So to make them like me, fool that I am, I offered them my television set.

It was at home in my flat, of course, but put away in that same big cupboard where the case full of Hebe's stuff is. Pandora had bought a new one, something special, I don't know what, but the latest thing. I'd seen it on the only occasion I'd been back, when I went there to fetch a book I wanted to reread. Anyway, I don't think I'd ever had such a response from Gerry to any offer I'd made. His smile, the warmth in his face, this was what I'd wanted to evoke from him all the time I'd known him, not just since I've been here. We were standing up at the time. We were in the living room, looking at the defunct set and waiting for the man to
come. Gerry actually took my hands, he took both my hands in his, saying how grateful he'd be, what an act of kindness.

The next thing was that I'd have to go and fetch it. I said he'd have to help me carry it in from the backseat of the car but first I'd phone Pandora and let her know I'd be coming for it. She's hardly ever in on the rare occasions I phone her and I have to leave messages, but this time she was.

“Don't you worry,” she said in that distant whispery voice of hers. “I'll bring it myself. I'm coming up your way. Irving Road, isn't it? I've got a friend in Herbert Road and I'm coming to see her. Michael will help me get it in the car.”

Michael was the man on the floor below, the one who had told me off for throwing away that Christmas food. I'd never spoken to him since and I didn't want him here. Come to that, I didn't much want her here either. In my experience when people call, even if it's only on an errand like this one, they always expect a drink or a cup of tea or even food. Grania and Lucy are like that. They “look in,” as they put it, on their way home from work or on a Saturday afternoon, and always they say, “I'm parched” or “I'm dying for a drink,” and I'm the one who has to get it. Still, that Saturday it was pouring with rain and I was glad I didn't have to schlep (as Hebe would have said) all the way down to Kilburn and get wet in the process of carrying that heavy set to the car.

Just before Pandora was due, Wendy turned up. I don't know why those girls come. I don't know what they get out of it. They bring nothing, they do nothing, and their conversation isn't worth listening to. Well, I do know why they come, of course I do. They're all after Gerry. He's young, he's quite good-looking, he's free, and though he's mean with his money he earns quite a lot. Those girls think that one of them will get him. I don't think myself they've much of a chance. I had more chance than they had, but that's over
now. Like the fool he is, he'll stay faithful to Hebe's memory for the next twenty years. They really ought to know that with all their cuddling up to Justin and bringing him presents, they are just wasting their time.

Wendy was wearing a dress like a school gym tunic, with her hair in pigtails, and she's a good ten years too old for that. “I didn't have time for lunch,” she said. “I'm starving.”

Gerry gave her a plateful of leftovers from our own lunch and asked me if I'd “be kind enough” to make her a cup of tea. While she was drinking it, sitting at the kitchen table, Pandora arrived. I've mentioned before that she belonged to the same type as Hebe, tall, slim, and with long blond hair, but there, I'd thought, the resemblance ended. She had this peculiar husky voice, as if she'd got a throat infection, whereas Hebe's had been strong and clear. But when she walked into the hallway something strange happened. It was a dull day and no one had yet turned lights on. Justin came out of the kitchen, where he'd been drinking juice at the table with Wendy, came to fetch some toy he wanted to show her, and when he saw Pandora he stopped and he stared at her. His lips parted as he looked up at her and then disappointment seemed to spread across his face, a desolation that changed him, briefly, from a boy of four into a little old man. It was quite interesting to see. He turned and ran into the living room, where Gerry was, and I heard the sounds of his sobbing.

“What's wrong?” Pandora said. “What did I do?”

“Nothing. I don't know.”

I wasn't going to tell her that, just for a moment, for an instant, the child had thought she was his mother come back. For that, I'm sure, was what it was. I switched the light on. I took Pandora into the living room and introduced her to Gerry. He was sitting with the still-weeping Justin in his
arms, held tightly against him, so he couldn't get up and couldn't shake hands, but he said hello and thanked her for bringing the television. I'd half expected him to react in the same way as Justin had, but he showed no sign of seeing any resemblance. He couldn't leave Justin, so Pandora and I went out to fetch the set, joined after a moment or two by Wendy, who was more hindrance than help.

More tea had to be made once we'd got the television up and running, and Wendy found a cake in a tin I was saving for next day, when Gerry's mother was coming. But there was no use saying anything. She always behaves as if she has a right to the run of the place when she “looks in.” Justin calmed down and began to behave with Pandora as he would with any ordinary stranger, a bit shyly, answering her warily when she spoke to him and once or twice running to his father to hide his face against Gerry's knees. Gerry and Pandora were getting on famously, their conversation being all about his terrible loss of Hebe. As far as I know, Pandora had never previously heard of her. Still, she made all the right sympathetic noises, which I could see annoyed Wendy.

After they'd both gone he asked me why I'd never said what a nice friend I'd got.

“She's not my friend,” I said. “She's my tenant.”

He went on talking about her and how kind she was, as if the television she'd brought was hers, not mine. “She reminded me just a little of Hebe,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “I can't see it myself.”

By that time I had more or less given up hoping for any return from Justin of the love I had offered him. I am afraid he is naturally sullen, as Hebe was when she couldn't get her own way. But nothing had prepared me for the outburst of rage, a real sustained tantrum, he indulged himself in that evening. It wasn't just sobs this time but full-blown screaming
as he flung himself about on his bed. What he needed was a good smack. That's what Mummy would have given him, but I knew what the result would be if I did. I could imagine the reproaches, the sulks, Gerry threatening me with the loss of my job, as if he could get anyone else to do what I did. So I shut Justin up in his bedroom, listened for a while outside the door to the sounds of hysteria and, to tell the truth, wondered how I had ever fancied I was getting fond of him.