The Bursar's Wife (31 page)

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up,” I said. He stopped an arm’s length away and undid his jacket so he could ease his hands into the pockets of his Savile Row trousers.

“Ah, isn’t this sweet, standing up for the lady while she’s here. Don’t tell me you’ve actually fallen in love with her?” Beneath the bluster he looked tired.

“You’re still drugging women to make films then?”

“Some women like to loosen their inhibitions, so fucking what? It’s a very English thing to have to do.”

“So you don’t spike people’s drinks?”

He smiled. “Only yours.” I tried a different tack, hoping I wasn’t overplaying my hand.

“What about Trisha Greene? Did you drug and film her?”

Sylvia, standing behind Quintin, gave me a puzzled look. Quintin studied me carefully.

“Trisha? Maybe I did film her, but Trisha wasn’t one to need her inhibitions loosening. In fact she left the night she was in my apartment on her own two feet, saying she was going to look for more of the same. It seemed the fun I provided just got her warmed up, but she was a slut like that.” He moved over to the sofa. “Anyway, Junior, this is all an irrelevancy. Isn’t it, Sylvia?”

He sat down where I had been sitting, next to the VHS tape, and felt the coffee pot.

“Fetch me a cup, there’s a good girl,” he said, without looking at Sylvia. She just stood there twisting the wedding ring on her finger like it could set Quintin on fire if she did it fast enough.

“Don’t,” she said.

But he glanced her way coldly and said, “A cup.”

She turned to leave the room. He smiled at me. “Sit down, Junior, and I’ll tell you what Sylvia didn’t have the balls to.”

I stayed standing, fists hard behind my back, my shoulder throbbing like buggery. I had a bad feeling rising in my gut.

“Suit yourself,” he said. He relaxed into the sofa, stretching his arms out along the back, taking his time to tell me whatever it was he was going to tell me.

“It’s about Lucy,” he said, glancing at the tape then fixing his eyes on me.

I was aware of Sylvia coming into the room, the rattling of cup on saucer, but I continued to stare at Quintin, whose full lips were twitching in anticipation.

“To be more accurate, it’s about your father. You see,” Quintin said, “Lucy’s your sister.”

The cup rattling stopped. Quintin’s grinning face, in fact the whole room, disappeared behind a white mist. What did he mean? I knew what he meant. How? Pull yourself together. He’s lying; it’s what he does.

“You look discombobulated, old chap.”

I shook my head. I needed to sit down but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“OK, George, you got me,” he said, putting his palm to his chest. “So I exaggerate, she’s your half sister. It’s quite simple. George Senior was the last person that night to deposit the good stuff in our English rose here. I’ve had him DNA tested and there’s no doubt about it. Sylvia is, in effect, your stepmom.”

“You had him tested?” I asked.

“Yes, I sent someone to swab him at the home Morley is generously paying for.” Yes, that explained the runt visiting him. I felt sick.

Sylvia came into my field of view behind the sofa on which Quintin was sprawled – I could discern the cup and saucer in my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I kept my gaze on the smirking Quintin. I was fighting to remain standing when Sylvia extended the cup and saucer with her left hand over the back of the sofa into Quintin’s line of vision. He half-turned to take it and her right hand appeared from behind the sofa and rose above his head. She was clutching a small kitchen knife.

I cried out.

Quintin jerked his head round to see the knife descending and tried to get up but he met the blade as it arced down. It sliced through his left ear and sank into his shoulder. He let out a horrible squeal and released the cup to clutch his bloody ear. My immediate thought was whether the broken cup on the carpet was replaceable.

BLEEDING FROM THE EAR IS ALWAYS PROFUSE, AND QUINTIN
was no different from human beings in this regard. Sylvia stood frozen, clutching the knife. Quintin staggered around moaning then sat on the other sofa. Sylvia came round and picked up the pieces of cup and put them on the table.

“He needs an ambulance,” I said.

“No he doesn’t. He needs to have his testicles removed,” she said calmly but confidently. “I’ve had enough of his… his endless chatter. Talking, he’s always talking. What have you got to say for yourself now, Quintin?”

He glared at her.

“Don’t drip on the carpet, please,” she said. Quintin, as if in obeisance, pulled a handkerchief from somewhere and pressed it to his ear. It immediately turned red.

“Sylvia, we need a first aid kit,” I said, taking her wrist in case she decided to emasculate him herself. She was in shock, as probably was I.

“In the scullery,” she said, staring at Quintin.

“Show me,” I said, not wanting to leave her alone with him, and not quite sure what a scullery was. She let me take the knife from her hand and we found our way to the kitchen. It was a massive rectangular room with a farmhouse-style table down the middle with twelve chairs round it. A huge Aga-type stove took up one side and wooden cabinets lined the other. Opposite was an arch into another area with sinks and work areas, where Sylvia led me. This was where the actual food preparation was done. A magnetic knife holder on the wall had ten knives ordered by size stuck to it. The smallest was missing: it was in my hand. I washed it thoroughly and put it back on the rack using a tea-towel. Sylvia handed me the first aid bag and back in the kitchen area I sat at the end of the large table to gather my thoughts – let Quintin fucking bleed.

Lucy was my half-sister. Was Quintin lying? Sylvia stood at the opposite end of the table and put her palms on the wooden surface.

“I’m sorry you had to hear it from him. I was about to tell you myself.”

“So it’s true?”

“Yes, I’ve seen the DNA results myself, assuming of course that the sample was from your father, but I’ve no real doubts.” She walked round and sat next to me. I noticed a tiny drop of blood on the collar of her white shirt, but it wasn’t the time to point it out. “It is obvious if you look at the two of you together.” I remembered Cathy at McDonald’s thinking Lucy and I were related. Lucy’s nose, a nose I was cursed with myself.

“Why didn’t I see it?” I said, shaking my head.

“Why would you? You weren’t looking for similarities. Anyway, I’m glad it’s out now. I needed you to know.”

“When did you know?” I asked, not quite being able to look her in the eye.

“I suspected some years ago. I wasn’t lying when I said Elliot thought she was his, it’s incredible how self-delusional men can be. But Quintin, being who he is, had his suspicions. And when Elliot couldn’t get me pregnant I was pretty certain. You see, his sperm count was low. I think that’s when he began to have doubts about Lucy. He never articulated them of course but I saw the way he looked at her. His unspoken fear was that Quintin was her father.”

“But why isn’t Quintin a candidate?”

She shook her head. “He can’t do it. Erectile dysfunction. He can’t get it up, not when there’s a woman present, anyway.”

“No, of course he can’t – all those… things in his apartment.”

“Yes. That’s what he’s reduced to. Won’t even try anything that could fix it. He thinks it’s our fault.”

“Ours?”

“Women.”

“But hang on, in the video with you—”

“He’s faking, or trying and failing. You can only tell if you look carefully but take my word for it, it’s one of the few things that evening that I can recall clearly. It made him livid.” It wasn’t clear on my tiny black and white TV, except his angry reaction when he’d stood up from between her legs. And then of course my father…

Quintin’s bellowing came through from the other room, even though it was half a mile away.

“This is too much to take in,” I said, standing up. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with the information.”

“Do? It just is, George. It’s just something that you need to accept.”

* * *

Quintin had found the tissues in their disguised box and had a wad of them pressed to his ear. They were rapidly going crimson. He’d managed to get his jacket off and it was thrown over the back of the sofa.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

I stood behind the sofa and opened the first-aid case, picking out a dressing, tape and a pair of scissors. His shirt had a five-inch long rip, through which I could see split flesh. Bleeding, but not as bad as his ear.

“Let me have a look at your ear,” I said. I told him to release the wad of tissue. An inch-long gash in the ear caused a corner to flop over like banana peel. Blood seeped out in a steady stream. I pressed the dressing to his ear and told him to hold it. Then I taped it to his head. With the scissors I cut his expensive shirt from the collar to the wound, then down and under the armpit back to the lapel. With his hand temporarily removed from his ear I pulled the sleeve from his arm. I felt his house keys in one of his jacket pockets as I leant over the sofa. I unwrapped another dressing and with my right hand pressed it onto the cut on his shoulder. He groaned and I let my left hand wander into the pocket with his keys. I pressed a little harder on his wound and closed my fingers tightly over the keys so they wouldn’t jingle, pulling them out.

“That crazy fucking bitch. I need to call the police.”

“You’ll need to get that ear and shoulder stitched up,” I said, leaving the first-aid kit by him on the sofa after taping the dressing to his shoulder. I walked to the door, his voice shrill behind me.

“Where are you going, you Armenian bastard? Call my driver, he’s outside.”

I turned away from his ashen face, then remembered the video tape. No point leaving it with him. I slipped it into my raincoat pocket with his house keys, left the room and closed the heavy door behind me. Sylvia was coming across the hall from the kitchen.

“Are you leaving?”

I nodded, managing to look her properly in the eye for the first time since Quintin had told me about Lucy.

“You’ll probably see Lucy before me,” she said. “But I’m sure you understand that I’d rather tell her myself.”

I looked back at the living room door where I could hear Quintin’s muffled voice cursing and groaning. I took a step closer to Sylvia, getting in her personal space.

“Was Elliot a good father to Lucy?” I asked.

Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean did he raise her properly, read to her, look after her when she was ill, go to her school plays, help her with her homework?”

“Yes, of course, he was an excellent father. He loved her.”

“Then for God’s sake what would be the point of telling her?”

“Because it’s the truth,” she said.

“Don’t, I’m begging you. Think of what you would be telling her. That her real father is a college butler, not the bursar? That the person she thought of as her father killed himself when he learnt the truth? That she was conceived during some sex party that was filmed and by the way, would she like to see it? That her real father is now a mute simpleton abandoned in a nursing home with Pick’s disease – he doesn’t even recognise me for fuck’s sake. Do you really want to dump all that on her?”

“You’re hurting me, George.” I was grabbing her wrists. I let go and she rubbed them. I took some deep breaths.

“The truth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I said, more gently. “It has consequences, and they’re not always good. At least think it through.”

“I’ve spent the whole of my life living a lie, putting on a façade, paying for my fear of the truth coming out. And I’m glad you now know, I’m relieved. I needed to be free of it,” she said.

This is why she’d come to see me in the first place. This was the reason she’d chosen me, a two-bit operator over a big London-based firm run by ex-coppers. So I could reach this point and lance her festering boil for her.

“Just think about what it would do to her,” I said. “You’re riding the crest of a wave at the moment but like all waves it has to crash somewhere.”

She nodded. “Maybe I haven’t thought it through, but it’s a secret I need to be free of.”

I opened the front door then stopped, pointing to the living-room door. “Can you deal with him?”

“He doesn’t scare me anymore.” I believed her.

“You won’t stab him again?” I asked.

“Do you care?”

“Not about him, no.”

She smiled humourlessly.

“What if Quintin decides to tell her?” she whispered, the old fear returning momentarily to her face.

“Quintin has other things to worry about, and besides, he doesn’t know where she is. Neither do you, for that matter.”

She looked relieved and nodded. At that moment Quintin came crashing out of the living room, trailing bloody bandage clutched to his ear, and made for the front door, glaring at us as he pushed past.

I stepped out behind him and followed him down the steps to his Merc which was parked behind my Golf. Mark was asleep in the driver’s seat. Quintin rapped loudly on the window and startled him. Mark wound down the window, his mouth agape at the sight of his boss.

“Get me to hospital, you cock-sucker. And you might want to open the fucking door.”

The Merc sped out of the drive in reverse, showering the back of the Golf in gravel.

I looked up to the front door but it was closed. I had one last thing to do to finish this.

THE SUNDAY MORNING CAMBRIDGE I DROVE THROUGH WAS
dark, damp and empty. I wondered whether Quintin would press charges against Sylvia for cutting him, and whether he would make the alumni lunch – if he did he would be heavily bandaged. I calculated that I had an hour before he got to Addenbrooke’s, was stitched up and made it back home to change, since Sunday morning would be quiet in A&E. Plenty of time for me to do what I needed to do. The last thing I wanted was Stubbing getting hold of Quintin’s hard disk copy of the film showing Sylvia and my father. I wasn’t sure whether I was doing this for Sylvia or him, or maybe even myself, since Dad would be none the wiser even if he watched it.