Undercurrent (27 page)

By her side, she heard Tanya let out a long, tremulous sigh of relief; Maggie followed the child's gaze to where the flag rose above the central turret of the castle. It was raised slowly, the flag of St George, red cross on white background, fluttering without enthusiasm, then lying flatly against the pole. Unseen hands tied a rope. 'That's good,' Tanya muttered.

'It doesn't look very happy,' Maggie said, chattily.

'But I don't suppose that's the point of it. I never quite know what flags are supposed to do.'

How silly she sounded to her own ears, gabbling for the sake of filling a void and keeping her there.

Tanya was nodding, wiping the damp sleeve of her jacket across her nose and leaving a trail, noticing it, rubbing at it with the other sleeve and looking so much happier now that she was ready to be condescending to a pig-ignorant friend of her mother's. 'It doesn't do anything. It only means that somebody's come in, Neil prob'ly, an' got inside, 'cos you have to to get at the flag. So if some silly bugger was still stuck inside, he'll be all right now, won't he?'

‘He might be a bit cross,' Maggie remarked, innocuously. 'But I expect he'll get over that, people do, don't they? It was his own silly fault, really. I suppose.'

The child shook her head.

'No, it wasn't. Mummy locked the door. I screamed and screamed and she wouldn't listen, I couldn't sleep for thinking and . . .'

'You bunked out of school to let him out? Do you want a cuppa before you go back? Coke or something, on the pier? She could not say, stay with me talk to me, she had no right. Tanya looked longingly back down the length of the Titanic and rubbed her hand against the nose of a sculpted fish.

'Can't,' she said finally. 'I don't like it. It's so fucking boring. I don't like the pier. I like this, though,' She continued to stroke the nose of the fish. 'Harry talks to it,' she added, inconsequentially. 'He tries to get into the boat, but he falls out, always falling. Gotta go.' But she was not entirely certain about whether she wanted to go, stood with her feet crossed, staring first at the flag and then, longingly, back down the length of the pier to where the caff promised warmth and something sweet. The longing glance was tinged with indecision.

Don't ever mention Harry to that child, do you hear? Don't ever do anything so cruel. The words of a command came into Maggie's mind and she could not remember from where, or who had spoken them when: Angela, or Francesca, something in a fax, written words, spoken words, blurred into a stern command so earnest it stopped her now. All those promises she had made.

'Shall I come with you?' she asked. 'In case they've missed you at school? What'll they say?'

'I'll tell them Mummy was poorly, made me late, only I never went in, you see, only looked like I did an' I shouldn't tell fibs, should I?' Maggie bent towards her, suddenly longing to push the hair out of her blinking eyes and wipe the pert nose which twitched on the brink of a sneeze. Such a child was not suitable for keeping as a pet although she had all the soft, self-willed neediness of a kitten.

'Fibs are generally bad,' she said gravely, producing a coin. 'But you have to tell them sometimes in a good cause. You've got a rumbly tummy. Get some chocolate on the way.'

As she watched Tanya sprint across the road, it crossed her mind to wonder whether children only began to trust other adults when they began to see the fallibility of their own parents.

She felt a dull thudding in the region of her heart, wished she had taken a chance and grilled the child and wished again she was on the boat, which had now disappeared. No one had asked the child about Harry, not at the time. The child was too fragile, too damaged, and on a practical level, no information she gave could be reliable; the best thing to do was to encourage her to forget.

There was no answer from Angela's flat. She went back to the comfort of the statue and watched her cousin's neighbours come and go. Harry talks to the statue meant Harry had talked to the statue; children confused tenses as well as identities, or at least she remembered having done exactly that. Maybe Tanya meant that she liked to talk to the statue and maybe it only meant that it was the mute companionship of the solid man in the boat which had drawn Harry out of doors on a cold day when it might have been raining.

She looked at the length of the pier and saw what Henry had meant. No little boy would cross a road and run so far, unless he was running away.

There were always excuses for not working. The state of the room, the height of the chair, the need for a cigarette, food, company and a preference for fishing 'Dear Mrs Dodder,' Edward wrote, crossed that out and wrote 'Hodder': 'I am only writing this letter because I am disinclined to do anything else. I do not care about the proposed changes to your will necessitated by your nephew failing to send a Christmas card. Regrettable of course, but hardly worth cancelling his bequest.

Your last will and testament has sixteen codicils already . . . suggest you wait and see if he acknowledges your birthday . . .' He might also drop a line to the nephew, but such an approach would be interventionist. Mrs Hodder had marked every item of her considerable porcelain collection with a piece of Elastoplast on the base bearing the name of a legatee; on good days, she dusted it and on bad days, changed the labels. When he himself was old and decrepit, he would do nothing but fish, topple into a river if he found himself counting the spoons. So difficult to prioritize the affairs of others. Lawyers were theoretically objective, treating clients equally from the distance of their own, mysterious qualifications, but that only meant pretending that he did not dislike the majority apart from the few of whom he was fond.

In the midst of the morning's work displacement activity by reverie, Edward removed his gaze from the ceiling cracks and found Henry sitting on the opposite side of the desk as if he belonged. He was wearing the same jacket but it was shrunk and the texture and colour had changed into something vaguely reptilian. It made him occupy the chair as if he was a person in a straitjacket unable to hold his arms to his own sides.

Either it had shrunk or the man had grown. He looked pathetically grubby and out of place in a jacket like that, but he had obviously wielded either authority or stealth to get past that phalanx of bosoms downstairs and in one moment of wry observation, Henry Evans was elevated in Edward's estimation into the ranks of clients he liked rather than tolerated. He leaned across the desk, arm extended for a handshake, as if he had been expecting him to call. Henry's attempt to reciprocate was awkward enough to send flying a pile of correspondence which both of them ignored. There were no apologies or awkward attempts to pick it up and Edward approved of all economies of effort. Both settled back into their chairs and regarded one another frankly.

'Do you ever think,' Henry asked, 'that you might have missed your vocation?'

'Frequently, yes. But I've very little idea of what it might have been, so it doesn't cause me much distress. One always assumed that a vocation would obviate boredom, but it doesn't follow, does it?' 'No, it doesn't. Scientists are bored; so are millionaires, I guess . . .'

'Carpenters must be bored. Policemen must be bored. Can't be a thinking man alive who doesn't imagine he could be doing better or different. I shall go to my grave mourning the fact that I haven't had enough fun. Or caught enough fish. What can I do for you?'

'Cup of coffee would be nice.'

Edward went to the door and bellowed down the stairs, 'COFFEE! TWO!' 'It might work; he said, resuming his chair and the endless search for a cigarette. 'The women here don't consider it beneath their dignity to make coffee. Perhaps you would have preferred tea?'

'No. Thank you. I just wanted to run through a few facts with you.'

'I thought you might,' Edward said, immediately understanding the subject. 'All we can ever rely on, facts."

'I was beginning to prefer instincts.'

'Bugger instincts. They're almost as bad as principles. As soon as I hear somebody say, it's a matter of principle, I want to scream. Likewise when they say I feel this is right, or I've got a gut instinct about that person or this. At the end of the day, it's rarely anything to do with guts, only money, which you don't keep in your gut unless you're very odd indeed.'

The coffee arrived. Ineffectual coasters were produced to guard the wrecked desktop and a plump woman floated away in a waft of splendid perfume.

Henry struggled out of his jacket. Leaning forward to pick up a mug would otherwise have been impossible.

'Which is why; Edward continued, 'I can't detect any alternative explanation for the untimely death of Harry Chisholm other than the one given. No one else had any motive for killing him, especially not a financial motive. If there was a cousin and an inheritance I could see it, but there isn't. There's desperation; there's pity for a life which is not going to unfold well, there's a woman at her wits' end having a moment of madness with a child who is being naughty and there's no other motive at all. An instinctive killing. Nagged at me for a long time before you came along.

Nags me every day. My own bloody instinct, telling me she was far too controlled a woman to lose it like that. Or to have let that child out of her sight.' A plume of cigarette smoke curled towards the yellow ceiling. Henry lit one too. Smoking was infectious.

'What I see as inherently unlikely; Henry said, 'is this child who hated the cold going out on his own.

Was it raining, do you know? I can't find anyone who can tell me if it was raining. Seems important to me: less reason than ever for him to go out, more reason for him to slip. And the woman downstairs can't remember that he ever did go out without his mother unless someone came to take him. I know it wasn't raining when he was found, it says so in the case papers.' The coffee was intensely good. Fuelled by coffee like this, Henry could understand how Edward survived a day in this uncomfortable room. He would probably float from task to task in his own, peculiar haze.

'Good Lord, man, the weather changes every five minutes here or haven't you noticed?

Nobody could possibly remember. And suppose he was driven out?

A screaming row about nothing or something, an order, GET OUT - something of the kind happens in my house once a week. The mother being dictatorial, cruel even. You see, Mr Evans, you may have to accept that your own blundering investigations, if such you call them, may reveal Francesca Chisholm in a worse light than ever. I hope you've thought of that. By the way, what happened to your jacket?'

'I don't think it's even mine,' Henry said. 'I was on my way to buy another. And a hat. All those thrift shops.. .'

'Thrift? Oh I see. I get it. Second hand.' The slightly dreamy look of an enthusiast came over Edward's face and it occurred to Henry to guess the source of his ill-fitting clothes. He could see Edward throwing out the whole wardrobe at the end of each month and starting again and the thought of doing such a thing was appealing.

'And it crossed my mind,' Henry went on relentlessly, 'that all kinds of junk end up in thrift shops' he did not add,
such as you wear
- 'and if I hunted around, I might find Francesca's things. She threw out her clothes as well as his and where did they go?

They had to go somewhere. This isn't the kind of place where people throw things away.'

'Good point, but I doubt there'd be any of it left by now. Were there any other facts you wanted to mention?

And while we're on the subject, I think our client has faxed us from prison. I faxed her, she faxed Maggie. She's allowed to do that. Only to her lawyers.

Old lawyers don't die, you know, they simply lose their appeal.'

'Does she write it herself? What does she say?' He wanted to see her handwriting. Edward scuttled beneath the desk to emerge the other side among the pile of spilled correspondence, clutching the shiny paper of a fax in one hand and a cigarette in the other. 'What does it say?' Henry repeated.

Edward adjusted his glasses, squinted at crumpled paper. Henry? Who's Henry? he read, his mouth forming the words which he failed to speak as he scrunched the thing into a ball and thrust it into his pocket. 'Says nothing,' he sighed theatrically. 'The fucking fax machine only works on Fridays.' He skipped round the desk and slumped back into his chair which swivelled with a mind of its own and spun him round so that his back was to Henry and he faced the fish. Henry could see tufts of his black hair above the chairback and see the curl of smoke.

'There's something very odd going on with Uncle Joe,' he announced. 'There seem to be two of him. I think it might be in everyone's interest if you went to see one of them.'

Edward was far more articulate when not facing an audience. Henry could empathize with that. 'Uncle Joe?' he queried.

'Disgraced Uncle Joe. Whom Francesca visited regularly. She refused to take notice of tarnished reputations. Angela Hulme took over visiting a few months back and I wonder why? Sits and talks for hours to someone, I'm told, but whoever it is, it ain't a Chisholm. It's a man who picks up strangers, So you'll do very well. Do your shopping first. I would.'

There was just about enough in this High Street to keep a smallish mind happy. A true city sophisticate might think otherwise, but Bond Street was a long way off, in another country entirely and it was another person than the one Maggie now recognized in herself who had agonized over which neutral shade of carpet for which room in a branch of John Lewis big enough to cover the whole of this row. There were exquisitely furnished houses in Warbling and, occasionally, well dressed people who did not do their buying here, and it was when they replaced their finery that the rest had the benefit. The richer of Warbling (the larger houses behind the town and out of the wind; the buildings with lawns, away from the warren of narrow streets of mixed fortunes adjacent to the seafront) dutifully recycled clothes, artefacts, pots and pans, linens, redundant toys, but mostly clothes, into the charity shops.

There was a time of her life when she would not have been seen dead inside a charity shop and Maggie regarded her present pleasure in their very existence as an indicator of how much she had changed: she loved them without a thought and so did everyone else. It was almost mandatory to explore them on a weekly basis; it was risk-free shopping; it was a common denominator for the elderly retired in Harris tweed jostling politely with impecunious young mothers with babes in arms, each with a different avenue to explore and nobody minded the fact that windows would be re-hung with dead Aunt Ethel's velvet curtains, or that Jimmy went to school in the cast-off clothes of someone two forms higher.