This Honourable House (14 page)

He tore at a hangnail until it bled. Frank, too, had been hurt. Damaged. By that cow of a wife. She had to be stopped. And it would take more than a knife in rubber to do it.

Christine listened once more to the message on the flat’s answerphone. It had been recorded several hours earlier. The caller’s number was withheld, but from the traffic noise it probably came from a callbox. What on earth could it mean? ‘Message for Christine, personal. Darling, sorry. I’ve not been feeling too brilliant recently. I’ve gone away for a few days to think things through. Don’t worry about me, please. I’ll be all right.’

Gone away? Where to? Why?

Benedict was not given to pouring out his innermost emotions at the best of times, and it had to be admitted that the last few weeks had hardly been that. He had been preoccupied and silent, brusque with her. He had seemed calm only when he was engaged on political work, writing a speech or researching for a media appearance. He was then still capable of making jokes, but they had acquired a harder edge, had taken on a tinge of cruelty. As such, the jibes were far more effective and widely repeated, with a concomitant gain in his poll ratings. Christine had sensed, however, that Benedict was uneasy at the blacker direction he was tending to take. But if it was successful, he had little room for manoeuvre.

She had put his increased moodiness down to the gruelling hours during the session. Their private life could have nothing to do with it, surely: Benedict was a political animal first and foremost. He had had no sex before he met and married her, and had been content with celibacy, or so he had insisted. Its lack now should have made only a marginal impact on his well-being. The individual who had expected too much and got little was herself. She was the one to feel sorry for. Benedict had everything going for him.

But now this. It was a puzzle.

She went into the bedroom and started pulling out drawers. Most were undisturbed. A couple of leisure shirts had gone, a pair of jeans, two sweaters. His favourite black leather jacket, which he never wore in town, was not on its hanger. Some bits of underwear, nothing much. And his passport was missing.

Christine sat on the edge of the bed and let it sink in. Her heart like ice, she picked up the phone. If he had left her, then a press statement would have to be agreed. After several attempts she located Lawrence, his cousin, best man and closest friend. ‘I don’t want to sound like an over-anxious wife, but I’m wondering what’s going on.’

The voice at the other end was soft, measured. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Thinking the worst. I suspect Benedict’s gone and done a bunk.’

‘Ah.’ There was a drawn-out sigh.

Even as she heard the faint hiss on the line, it came to Christine that another possibility had entered Lawrence’s head. ‘God in heaven,’ she said suddenly. ‘We’d better call the police.’

Benedict lay still and kept his eyes shut. If he breathed very slowly so that his heartbeat slowed and his need for oxygen became almost irrelevant, he could make himself float, an inch or two, above the bed. His body became weightless, his limbs lost their connections, tendons and sinews no longer constrained his joints. All he had to do was slide away from conscious thought, put a temporary hold on existence. It was not difficult, but it needed a strange kind of imploded concentration he had avoided for ages. The result was almost a trance, too pleasant to be scary, and too welcome to avoid.

This wasn’t a state of sleep, or even drowsiness: his mind was sluggish but watchful. The masters of those mysterious techniques of transcendental meditation would have been proud of him. Instead his physical being felt as if it had simply disintegrated and become insubstantial. The sensation was wonderful, as when in childhood summer days he would sometimes take a boat and row out into the bay, then ship the oars, lie down full length and doze. Above him the restless seagulls would flutter and squeal, but he would dismiss them and let the waves rock him gently into oblivion.

If he remembered those moments now, he felt no regret, no desire to return to those places, for they would not be as isolated, or as coolly windswept, as free of interference from other children and their parents as in the days of his youth. But memory could play tricks. Perhaps twenty years earlier it had been busier, when his neighbours mainly spent holidays on their home beaches and licked ice-cream cones and rode donkeys into the foam. He never recalled the jagged edges of their intrusion, only the calm and peace of the lolling boat, as the clouds parted and a shaft of sunlight made him turn away his face.

As an adolescent he would walk those dunes for miles, especially in the chillier periods of the year when taking out a boat would have provoked questions or produced from his mother an insistence that he take a mackintosh or lifejacket, or – to defeat the object entirely – someone else with him. He had considered taking up golf but the cost defeated him. Any ridicule from school friends would not have been a bother: he was used to their judgement that he was odd. Not odd but unusual, he might have claimed, though to evade bullying he would simply smile as if he had not quite heard. He did not want what they wanted. He was not excited by talk of teenage fumblings with girls. Their competitiveness was closer to his taste, but he did not share its direction: sport, the best team, the biggest goal-scorers, or the latest pop group, did not grab his attention. If they were not inspired by poetry and the Romantics, that was their loss. But Benedict was not in the thrall of writers or singers. His self-indulgence was his own company.

On some days, risking the wrath of his mother, he would choose a spot out of the wind, spread his jacket on the dunes and lie down, with his face towards the grey thrashing sea. The sand would slip through his fingers, grain by grain, slightly damp, leaving his skin smelling of seaweed. How inappropriate that this sand should be used in hourglasses to mark the passage of time when it was so anonymous, so indistinguishable mote from mote; yet anyone who used a timer, as his mother did for his morning egg, had a specific purpose for that moment, and an identity that separated them from everyone else.

He liked being alone. He liked lying silent, not thinking, barely moving. The traffic-jam of ideas inside his head would slow down, their jangle would quieten, as if they had run out of energy. But sometimes they slipped instead into fantasies, when a half-awake brain would conjure up a hazy but familiar image. Often it was a face, unremarkably similar to his own but without the imperfections, the spots, the small scar, the quizzical expression that protected him from the world. This
alter ego
face was free of physical marks. Its presence was an immense comfort. It enveloped him, shut out the cold, and cosseted him without alteration or limit. Most of all, it sensed how he felt about everything.

You could never really get inside the mind of any other person. You could only guess at what
was in somebody else’s soul, just as they had only the faintest inkling of the depths and predilections of yours. If you tried to connect you took a chance not only of misunderstanding but of wasting a great deal of time that could be put to much better use. Trying to connect was, however, an activity that marked us out as human. We had to try. We had to risk being rebuffed. We had to risk hurting someone else’s feelings, but in one sense that didn’t matter. The only pain you had no choice about was your own. You had to suffer that. Other people’s you could ignore, even though convention dictated that sympathy be expressed about it. But you didn’t
feel
another person’s distress. Only your own. In the last analysis, we are alone.

The reverie always came to this juncture, and Benedict was never sure whether it was satisfactory or deeply disturbing. Perhaps there was something fundamentally wrong with him, that he lived so much inside his own head and was cut off from the rest of mankind. When he had gathered the courage to mention it at university, in a one-to-one tutorial, Andrew had laughed, but not cruelly. ‘You have a finer brain than most,’ he had said. ‘That’s why you get impatient with others’ stupidities. Ah, yes, I have seen you.’ Andrew had advised him to treat people with more consideration: seeing inside their minds was a matter of practice, not intuition. And for the most part, other people were worth it. Benedict would discover that, when he fell in love.

From the prone figure on the bed came a low groan. If love was the answer, he was more alone than ever.

Maddie and Christine sat at the unadorned wooden table in the Devon farmhouse kitchen, their backs resolutely to the door. The blinds were drawn against the light. Above their heads, shiny
copper-bottomed
pans, bunches of herbs and dried lavender hung from the beams. A tea-towel pinned to the wall carried a recipe for meat pasties. Before them stood a sturdy china teapot, almost empty, and a plate of bought-in scones with jam and yellow clotted cream, almost untouched.

Outside a gaggle of press and curiosity-mongers were kept at bay by the police. From time to time a burst of laughter could be heard and once a window was rattled, but a curt, official voice intervened and the intruder was removed.

‘You say the police found him?’ Christine glanced over her shoulder, as if the sleeping Benedict, upstairs in his old room, or the crowd outside might hear them.

Maddie picked at a scone. ‘He wandered into the service station near Bridgwater. Scruffy and dirty. Lost his jacket. Called them himself. That’s been hushed up, of course.’

‘Why didn’t he simply catch a train if he wanted to come down here?’

‘Search me.’ Maddie’s eyes were down. ‘He must have hitched a ride. That’s the only thing I can think of. When he was a little boy I used to warn him not to, it’s too dangerous. But he took no notice. Once he got as far as Reading. I was frantic. You don’t like to imagine what might have happened, do you? He was only ten.’

‘Spirit of adventure.’

‘No. I don’t think so. Defiance, more like.’

Christine smiled despite herself. She could understand Benedict needing to defy his mother. On the other hand, ‘Defiance is not an emotion I’ve tended to associate with Benedict. He’s quite the conformist.’

‘That’s what I used to drum into him. But I often wondered. Water off a duck’s back, a lot of it. He would go his own way.’ Maddie picked the currants out of her scone. ‘Perhaps I should have warned you. You can’t tell what’s going on inside his head. Defiance you call it, though heaven knows if that’s what got into him this time. When he was a kid he was very independent. This time he was running away.’

Her daughter-in-law gave her a sharp look. ‘Running away? From me? From our life in London? He’s not the sort to shirk responsibility. All he told me was that he was off for a few days.
He took some kit with him. But running back to you? With respect, Maddie, I’m sure it’s more complicated than that.’

If she expected Maddie Ashworth to bridle she was disappointed. Benedict’s mother had been as worried about her son’s welfare as anyone. The crisis of his two-day disappearance had not set the women at odds, but as both recognised, it had the potential to bring them together.

‘What, then?’ Maddie asked wearily.

Faced with the challenge Christine was taken aback. ‘Oh, I – I don’t know,’ she stammered.

‘Something in bed, was it?’

‘Oh, Maddie, you can’t ask questions like that.’ Christine’s mask began to crumble.

‘I’m his mother. I did wonder. It was you, my dear, when we were chatting at the Savoy. You should have had the bloom of a young bride about you and it was missing. You should have been blushing and giggling, maybe even asking me about his personal habits – like, did he always leave the top off the toothpaste tube? Instead it was as if you two were living in separate households. You simply didn’t give the impression of being a happily married pair.’

The remarks would have been hurtful had they been delivered in a cutting tone. But Maddie spoke almost mournfully, as if lamenting the loss for her son and his wife. As she finished, her shoulders, usually so proud, sagged a little.

‘You may have seen what I couldn’t.’ Christine’s voice faltered, then she sat up. It was time to stop fencing. ‘Maddie, this may seem harsh, but did anything, when Benedict was a young man, give you cause for concern? That he might have, ah, difficulties …?’

‘I used to tease him about his lack of girlfriends, if that’s what you mean. But he was smart. Immediately after I’d mentioned it he’d appear with some lass on his arm, simpering and pretty, as suitable as any mother could want. She’d be dotty about him, you could take that for granted. Then it’d fade, and we’d see her no more. No explanation, but you got the message that he wasn’t interested.’ Maddie chuckled grimly. ‘He’d only dated her to shut me up.’

‘He did the right thing to keep people happy. Or off his back,’ said Christine slowly. ‘I’m beginning to wonder. Was I a necessary convenience? Like washing-powder or loo rolls? Can’t manage without ’em in a civilised society. A man must have a wife. “Christine, are you available? Are you keen?” “Delighted, Benedict, honoured to be asked.” And here I am.’ She fingered her wedding band as if testing whether it would come off without a tug.

‘He does love you,’ Maddie said. ‘I’m sure he’s not lying over that.’

‘You believe him?’

‘Stands to reason. If he didn’t, if you didn’t matter to him, he’d carry on regardless, wouldn’t he? Lots of men find that dead easy. He’d be charming and … what’s the word? Punctilious. But he wouldn’t
care
. I know – I was married to a man like that. Benedict’s father.’

Christine gazed at her in surprise, but Maddie waved a dismissive hand. ‘A story for another day. What I drilled into Benedict was the importance of good manners, but it was obvious he grasped that better than anyone. Got it from his father, I suppose. But what I admired about the boy was that he did care. He felt things deeply, and he’d think till his head ached. So I reckoned he’d never hurt anybody, wouldn’t ever tread a path that’d cause grief. Sounds like I was wrong.’

They did not need to spell out what had taken place. In such a family, between such women, oblique references were sufficient. Christine’s throat was dry. When she spoke she felt suddenly old. ‘He did try, you’re right. He would get upset, but I never thought…’

‘Mothers can tell.’ Maddie poked a finger into the remains of her scone. ‘Somehow you suddenly see you’re not going to get grandchildren. Better, maybe, than littering the streets with the pups, like some young men do these days. And I won’t say anything against him. I won’t say I wish he hadn’t been born. I won’t grieve. He’s my son, and I love him.’

‘So do I.’

Christine and Maddie clasped hands, the older woman with bowed head, her hair framing her worn face untidily, Christine with a stony expression.

They were sitting silent as the back door creaked open then shut. A camera bulb flashed, the electric motor whirring aggressively. The noise of rushing feet could be heard, then the gruff official voice once more, ushering the nosy-parkers away.

A tall figure had entered the kitchen.

‘Aunt Maddie? Are you there? Christine?’

They withdrew their hands as if they had been discovered in some guilty embrace. Maddie brushed her hair back into place and sat up, reaching automatically for the teapot. ‘Lawrence! You’ve come all this distance? Come in. The tea’s gone cold, I’m afraid. I’ll make some more.’

‘Thank you. It’s nasty out there.’ Lawrence pulled off his gloves, unfastened his coat and flung it carelessly over a chairback. Neither of the women rushed to hang it up. He jerked a thumb. ‘And we have company.’

His hands seemed unsure what to do: they lifted, and flapped, and fell back awkwardly. He was given a mug of tea and curled his fingers around the handle. ‘Don’t blame me, I voted Tory,’ was the slogan round its edge. He read it out with a hollow laugh.

‘Benedict’s still asleep,’ Maddie announced, in a brittle tone. ‘He was in a bit of a state when the police brought him – at a guess, he hadn’t had a wink in days. But I gave him a hot toddy and tucked him up. We haven’t had a peep out of him since.’

‘Good, good. That’s probably what’s best.’ Lawrence was trying to sound businesslike.

Christine struggled to smile at him. ‘What are the press saying?’ she asked quietly.

Lawrence considered. ‘I’ve got the London editions in the car,’ he answered, ‘but they’ve nothing much to go on. Benedict Ashworth cancelled engagements and disappeared from view for a couple of days. It isn’t a great news story – it hasn’t legs. No crime has been committed and the police have kept schtum, thank heaven. I’ve told them he had a dose of flu and came down to Devon to recuperate. If we don’t feed them any more information, it’ll die. Provided …’

The women waited. Lawrence sighed. There was a strong element of whistling in the dark about this approach, but it was their best hope: if nobody elaborated on the episode, it would slide quickly from a headline to a footnote. ‘Provided, of course, that he gets back to work promptly and doesn’t hint at another version. Have we any inkling yet what he wants to do?’