Tomorrow's ghost (22 page)

‘Hell, Princess—‘ Paul’s voice was suddenly edged with anger ‘—doesn’t it strike you as bad medicine that neither Hugh nor David are here just when we need them most?

And we can’t even damn well
talk
to them either—and there are such things as communications satellites … David’s only in the embassy at Washington, not on Mars—we could have him back here in the flesh by Concorde for tea-time, taxi-time included.

But…
neither of them
—
you can call that bad management, if you like. Or bad luck. Or coincidence. But if you do, you’d better remember also what David taught us about them, Frances.’

Bad luck is what the Other Side wishes on you.

Coincidence is very often a damned liar.

And bad management
—

Then Frances knew exactly what Paul was up to, why he was going to so much trouble to spell everything out, and—above all—what he intended her to do about it.

*   *   *

(She could recall not only the words, but the occasion; David, fairly tanked-up after dinner, and James Cable and Paul and herself, all relaxing after a hard day’s work … and Paul, very carefully not tanked-up at all, playing his favourite game of capping David’s quotations, or anticipating them, and gently needling him.) (‘And bad management,’ David had said, ‘is when you find yourself taking unnecessary risks.’)

(‘And good management,’ Paul had said, ‘is presumably when you find someone else to take those risks?’)

*   *   *

‘All right, Paul, I take your point. We do have to talk.’ She thought hard for a moment. ‘You better make it after dark, quite late … and by the back way, if there is one.

And if there are any complications I’ll park my car pointing out of the driveway.’

‘There’s a careful princess, now! And just as well too, maybe … if your friend Hugo is right.’

‘My friend—who?’

‘Hugo. Hugo Crowe.’

‘Oh—Professor Crowe, you mean. He’s not my friend, I’ve only met him once.’

‘Well, he regards himself as your friend. He says you are a darling—even a Grace Darling, combining heroism with beauty. Just another passing conquest of yours.

Princess… but obviously you’ve stopped counting them—fairy princesses are traditionally cruel, of course.’

He was pleased with himself now that she had taken his point.

‘If he’s right? How should he be right?’ Frances frowned. ‘Right about what?’

‘You told him a story—about a blind prince? A fairy story, presumably.’

The skin between her shoulder-blades crawled suddenly. ‘Yes. Yes?’

‘He says you shouldn’t have told it. But particularly he says you mustn’t point at anyone. And on no account must you kiss the third prince—you’re to choose one of the other two. And don’t ask me what all that means, because I don’t know, and he wouldn’t tell me. For my own good, that was, he said. A very superstitious fellow, your friend Hugo … though no one has a better right to be, I suppose.’

Frances closed her eyes. ‘I’m not with you at all, Paul. Why is—why has he the right to be superstitious?’

‘You haven’t done your homework. He’s the author of
The Psychology of Superstition
…
why people won’t walk under ladders, and all that stuff. Huh! But please don’t worry about me, Frances dear—you can point at me any time, I’m not superstitious. And you can kiss me too, I’m not blind—it’ll be a pleasure, I assure you… Maybe tonight, and make an honest princess of you.’ A kiss sounded down the line. ‘Watch out for yourself, Frances—save all your kisses for me.’

ON THE OUTSKIRTS
of Colonel Butler’s village there was a big new garage, with a showroom full of gleaming Japanese cars and an unbeatable offer on its petrol.

Frances pulled on to the forecourt, just short of the pumps, and sat thinking for a moment, hypnotised by the empty phone box beyond the car-wash at the far end of the buildings.

All she had to do was to go to that box and lift the phone and dial the number and put the money in, and then say a few words. It would be just another phone call, and even if the Mossad line at the Saracen’s Head was no longer secure it would be untraceable if she was quick.

Except it wouldn’t be just another call, because once she’d made it she’d be more than halfway committed to one side of Paul’s palace revolution and not to the side with the better odds at the moment. Not even, come to that, to the side that had the right on it for certain, notwithstanding her instinct—and William Ewart Hedges’ blessing.

A tousle-headed young man came out of the petrol kiosk and stood staring towards her.

Paul, on the other hand, was hedging his bets with a vengeance. Though (to be fair to him) he’d gone a lot further than she might have expected him to go, with his ambitions, and with the promises of advancement they would have made to him, like those which had been made to her in return for results.

The young man pointed towards her, and then to the pumps.

Mustn’t point at anyone.

What Paul hadn’t done, and what he wasn’t going to do (because of those ambitions), or at least not yet, until he was sure which way the tide was flowing (also because of those ambitions), was to risk disobeying a direct order.

(Good management is finding someone else to take the risks, namely, Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon.)

She rolled the car forward to the five-star pump.

The young man looked at her, and then the car, and then at the pump. And finally back at her. He was young and beautiful, and he wore an incredibly patched pair of jeans which appeared to have been poured on him, and a dark blue sweat-shirt bearing the legend ‘Oxford University’.

Frances looked down at the fuel gauge: it had registered under half-full when Paul had turned over the car to her yesterday, a long way north, but it was still not quite on empty. It was that sort of car.

‘Can I help you?’ He smiled, and was more beautiful, and the accent went with the sweat-shirt.

‘Do you take Barclaycards?’

‘Barclay and Access—not American Express, for some obscure reason. But you won’t get any Green Shield Stamps, they’re only for hard cash, I’m afraid.’ Still smiling, still looking down at her, he tossed his curls towards the great garish poster above his shoulder. ‘It’s all in the small print. Though actually our petrol is cheap at the moment—you’re supposed to come in for our extra special offer, plus quintuple stamps for cash, and then think better of it and buy a new car instead, with a full tank and a million stamps, or something.’

He really was lovely, thought Frances uncontrollably. But he was ten years too young for her—in another ten years she’d be old enough to have a son of his age—and as unattainable as a shaft of sunlight.

‘Should I be tempted?’ She knew that it was the temptation of make-believe, if only for a moment, to which she was surrendering.

The smile compressed itself with mischief. ‘There’s a couple of salesmen back there just waiting for me to give them the signal … Actually, the cars aren’t bad at the price, though the spares are a bit pricey. Myself, I’d rather have a Honda Four-hundred-four.’

‘A motor-bike?’

‘A bike, yes.’ His eyes glazed at the thought, blotting her out, and when they saw her again they were no longer interested in her. ‘Four star, you want?’

The gossamer moment was over. She was just a woman customer in a nondescript car and he was a young petrol pump attendant, a strange face glimpsed for an instant in passing, and then gone forever.

Yet, in a strange cold way, Frances had the feeling that she was the stranger, the unreality, not this boy. For he belonged to the warm-blooded world of friends and car salesmen, and pay on Friday, saved towards his Honda Four-hundred-four, which was a real world beside which hers was a shadow country of ghosts and memories. Simply, she had caught his warmth for an instant, as any ghost might warm its pale hands on the living, and that had made her substantial enough for him to see. But now she was fading again, and the sooner she faded away altogether, the better—the safer—for them both.

‘Five star, please.’ She reached decisively into her bag for the right Barclay card, neither Fitzgibbon nor Fisher, but her own very private untraceable Maiden Warren.

‘Five star?’ He controlled his surprise just short of disbelief. ‘How many gallons?’

She no longer saw him. It was curious that she had pretended to herself for so long that she was in two minds about the phone call, even that she’d half-blamed Paul for setting her to it, when she’d intended all along to make it, since last night. Paul had merely added reason to her instinct for disobedience.

‘Fill her up.’ She passed the card across without looking at the boy, and opened the car door. ‘I’m going to make a phone call.’

*   *   *

She pressed the button and the coins dropped.

‘Saracen.’

It was a rough East End voice. But then, the Saracen’s Head was a rough East End pub, David Audley had said, where the beer was as strong as the prejudices and it didn’t pay to ask the wrong question or support any team except West Ham.

‘I’d like a word with Mr Lee.’ Out aloud ‘Mr Lee’ sounded rather Chinese, or even Romany, certainly not Israeli.

‘ ‘Oo wants ‘im?’ the rough voice challenged her.

‘A friend of a friend of his,’ replied Frances obediently.

‘Oh yus? Well, ‘e ain’t ‘ere.’

Recognition sign.

‘Mr Lee owes my friend six favours, for services rendered.’ She wondered as she spoke whether that meant anything or nothing; with David’s quirky sense of humour it might even be a genuine reminder.

‘Is that a fact, now? ‘Old on a mo’, luv.’

Frances waited. Through the smudgy window of the phone box she saw the young man take the nozzle of the petrol hose out of the tank. He peered at the numbers registered on the pump, and then back at the car. Then he scratched his thatch with his free hand. Then he bent down and looked underneath the car. Then he straightened up and stared towards the phone box. Then he reinserted the nozzle into the tank again.

Frances cursed her carelessness, which had quite unnecessarily turned him from an uninterested, disinterested young man into an interested young man. And more, a sharp young man (as it was November, and term had started, for a guess a sharp young man serving out his free year before Oxford, earning enough on the pumps for that Honda of his dreams?). And, most of all, a young man who would remember her now, right down to the Warren Barclaycard, if anyone came to unlock his memory.
Sod it!

‘Ullo there?’

It was a different voice, but only marginally different, and not what she had expected even though she had never expected Colonel Shapiro himself.

‘Mr Lee?’

‘Naow, ‘e ain’t ‘ere. I’m a friend of ‘is. Do I know you, darlin’?’

‘No—‘ Frances floundered for a moment as she watched the young man filling the tank. When he had done that, if he was the young man she took him to be, he would look under the bonnet on the pretext of checking the oil. ‘No. I’m a friend of a friend of his.

‘Oh ah?’

The young man replaced the hose in the pump, taking a sidelong glance at the phone box as he did so. Then he walked round to the driver’s window and leaned inside to release the bonnet catch.

‘You still there, darlin’?’

‘Yes.’

Sod it!
He was lifting the bonnet now. She had never made stupid little mistakes like this before, never taken big risks like this before … never disobeyed direct orders like this before, or almost never. And it was making mistakes, taking risks and disobeying orders which killed people, and more often than not other people too. That had been what David himself had said; and, in a very creepy way, that had been also what Professor Crowe had told Paul Mitchell—
you shouldn
’
t have told that story.
And the queer thing was that she had always known there was something malevolent about Grandmother’s fairy story, even before she’d told it to Robbie that last time, by the fireside, on his last leave.

‘Come on, darlin’—spit it out, get it off yer chest.’

Superstition, sod it! ‘Is this line secure?’

‘You arskin’? It was until I ‘eard your voice, ducks!’

Superstition: if she pointed her finger at the young man with his head under the bonnet of her car, then that would solve one of her problems. But that would be too cruel…

‘My friend said … if I ever needed to get a message to him, Mr Lee would do it. And Mr Lee owes him six favours, he said. But is this line secure?’

‘Hah-hargh! If you ain’t blabbed—if my pools comes up this Saturday … an’ if my old auntie ‘ad two of ‘em she’d be half-way to being my uncle—if you ‘ain’t blabbed, then you pays yer money an’ you takes yer choice, darlin’. And I ain’t promisin’ nothin’, mind you. But if you was to give me a message then I might pass it on to Mr Lee if I sees ‘im.

‘An then it’ud be up to ‘im, like—wouldn’t it, if ‘e owes yer friend like you say ‘e does.

Right?’ The young man closed the bonnet, pressing it down to engage the lock and carefully wiping his paw-marks from the cellulose with a rag from his back pocket.

Beyond him, on the edge of the forecourt, there was an old break-down truck, looking rather broken-down itself, like a sick doctor waiting for emergency calls he couldn’t attend; and beyond the truck a line of dead elms with the bark peeling from their diseased trunks; and beyond the elms a great bank of rainclouds from whose advance-guards above her the first spots of rain spattered on the dirty window, as she stared out of it, blurring the scene.

He was flannelling her, of course: he was Mr Lee, because there was always a Mr Lee in the Saracen’s Head during opening hours, David had said—one Mr Lee or another, it didn’t matter who—to take messages for Colonel Shapiro, that was Mr Lee’s job.

And she, equally, was flannelling herself, still pretending up to the very last moment and beyond it that maybe she would, and maybe she wouldn’t give Mr Lee her message.

‘Right, darlin’—‘ He knew it too ‘—speak up, then.’