R Chisholm wasn't dead or even badly injured. Guy felt angry with Maeve for causing Leonora unnecessary anxiety. The woman made a drama out of everything. No doubt going in the ambulance to hospital with him and seeing him taken off for a brain scan had made her hysterical. But as far as Guy could tell, Robin had simply got a mild concussion and a few cuts and bruises. To add to that black eye, he thought. She had told her tale after Leonora had ministered to her with an aspirin and a glass of the stuff he wouldn't dignify with the name of wine that came out of that cardboard box. "We were coming out of the park, you know that bit where the roads sort of meet and come out into the Bayswater Road and there are lights and everything, where the Royal Lancaster is. I don't know what you call it." "The Victoria Gate," said Guy. She took no notice of him. She hadn't since she came in. He might as well not have been there, except that it wasn't natural, when talking, to avoid ever looking to the right side of the room. She kept her head turned away the way she might if there were vomit on the floor. "Well, we were coming from the Kensington Gardens side, we were going to go in the Swan for a drink. You know it's always dicey crossing the road there because the traffic tears round the--is it called the Ring? So we were very very careful but naturally looking to the right, if you see what I mean, we didn't think the left mattered on account of the lights being red and nothing being there anyway. And then it happened. This car came tearing out of whatever that road's called by the side of Hyde Park Gardens..." "Brook Street," said Guy, expecting no acknowledgement and getting none. "Robin had gone over ahead of me. My shoe-lace was undone. I was bending down doing up my shoe-lace, only he didn't realize and he'd gone on over. This car came tearing out of nowhere--well, out of"--she looked at him at last--"Brook Street, I suppose, right through the red light; the lights might not have been there for all the notice he took. Thank God Robin's pretty quick on his feet and I saw and I yelled. I screamed out, 'Robin! Look out!' The car hit him, but only a glancing blow. It didn't hit his head, he hit his head on a lamp-post. "There are never any police about when you want them, are there? A great crowd gathered, though, you can always depend on that. I wasn't in shock then, the shock didn't hit me for about an hour--well, it doesn't, does it? Most of the people came there just to gawp and get the maximum thrill--you know the type--but there was one man with a bit of sense who phoned for an ambulance. The ambulance man asked me if I got the number of the car but of course I hadn't, you have other things to think about at a time like that." Guy felt a certain relief, though Danilo's hit man would certainly have used fake registration plates. A failure but a brave attempt. Better luck next time. Maeve at any rate had no suspicion, as far as he could tell, that the incident in the park had been any more than the result of a piece of reckless driving. What Guy would have liked to say was that it served Robin right for having the bad manners to go across a fairly dangerous street on his own, leaving his girl-friend on the pavement tying up her shoe-lace, but he thought better of it. Leonora seemed both upset and relieved, Maeve much restored by having told her tale and got it off her chest. "Is there anything to eat?" she said. "We never got around to lunch, as you can imagine." If only Leonora had chosen that moment to go to the bathroom or something, he could have said what he wanted to, something on the lines of, "Oh, really, how amazing, I'd have expected them to be serving caviar and blinis in the ambulance," or, "You mean you never went to the dear old Swan after all?" But Leonora stayed, dispensing extravagant sympathy and a pastrami sandwich. Fortified, Maeve gave a deep sigh, helped herself to more from the vine-patterned box. Her face had grown pinker; she was really a very pretty girl, if you could use that word about someone so statuesque, with such flashing blue eyes and so much lion's-mane hair. Guy was just thinking that her legs were the same sort of length as another girl's height, when she turned to him and said with the utmost venom, "It's all thanks to you. If you hadn't bludgeoned him he'd have had a better idea of what he was doing. He was half-blinded, do you know that? He's been having the most crushing headaches. If anything shows up on the brain scan it's just as likely to be through you." Guy's reply was to extend his neck and turn his face from side to side so that she could see the deep scratch marks, which, though healing, looked rather worse than they had immediately after Robin had inflicted them. She said with a light scathing laugh, "Oh, I've no doubt he had to defend himself." "Yes, like a fucking tom-cat," said Guy, he couldn't help himself. "They do tend to get run over in the Bayswater Road." Both girls were on him for that. How could he? How could he talk like that? When poor Robin was lying in a hospital bed, when he might have some serious injury. Hadn't he any ordinary human feelings? "Haven't you any affect?" said Maeve incomprehensibly. He apologized to Leonora, who said that that was all right, but perhaps he had better go now. She would have to phone her parents. Perhaps she would go to the hospital to see Robin, she and her mother would go together. It pleased Guy that there had been no mention of the ginger dwarf in all this. He, it appeared, was quickly forgotten. If only Maeve had taken herself off after the announcement had been made, he was sure Leonora would have come running into his arms for comfort. When the story was being told, at one point she had actually rested her hand on his shoulder, as on the natural place to steady herself. He must, ideally, try to be with her when the news ultimately came of Robin's death, as in a day or too it must. Next day, as usual, he phoned her. She was at home. That in itself was good, was reassuring. You would expect her to run to the man she talked of marrying but she hadn't done that, she had stayed at home. He had no qualms about ingratiating himself with her. "How is Robin?" "Do you care?" "Leo, of course I care. Just because we had a bit of a disagreement when we were both pissed--I mean, for God's sake. Men do fight, it's the way they are, you have to accept that." Did they? Not in her world perhaps. "It doesn't mean I'd bear a grudge, no way." "I suppose I don't really understand. It's not just me as a woman. William wouldn't either." His heart dropped. His heart was a small cold stone dropping through him. "Robin's okay," she said. "They're keeping him in till tomorrow. It isn't just the accident. They're harking back a bit to that trouble he had four years ago--you know, when he was in hospital all those weeks?" It had been around the time she had changed her mind about going to Samos with him. Weeks had gone by and she had been cold to him and he angry with her. But he seemed to remember some trouble of Robin Chisholm's--headaches, dizziness, suspected epilepsy. Of course, it ultimately turned out there was nothing wrong with him. "It so happens it was exactly four years ago," Leonora said. "Well, he must have gone into hospital the first week of August and he stayed there till nearly the end of September. I don't see how that could affect him now, do you, Guy?" Guy said no, he didn't think so, and especially (trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice) since all the tests that first time had been negative. Was Maeve feeling better? "She's in a really bad nervous state, Guy." He loved the way she kept calling him by his Christian name in that confiding way. "It must have been an awful shock. I think she's very much in love with Robin." Too bad, thought Guy. She'll just have to bear it when her love comes to nothing. I'm very much in love and who gives a shit about me? Something was bothering him, something about Robin Chisholm, though he couldn't think what it was. Often these days he experienced this fuzziness, a cutting off, almost. To call it confusion was too strong, it wasn't as bad as that. "Will you have dinner with me tonight?" he said. "No, Guy, dear, I never do. You know that." "No one need know, Leo. I'll be very discreet about it. They needn't know." "Who's 'they'?" He expressed it carefully. "Your family. The people who're close to you." She was silent. When she spoke she sounded distressed. How is it that you can love someone and yet be glad when they're distressed? "Oh, Guy, how I wish... It's no use. Phone me tomorrow," she said. His heart, which seemed to have shrivelled to the size of a pea, was suddenly huge, was swollen and soft and palpitating. She had sounded as if she was going to cry. And over him. She had been moved to tears by him. "Darling Leonora, have dinner with me tomorrow, any day, you name the day. Or I'll come over. Shall I come now?" "No, Guy, of course not." "Then let's meet tomorrow." "We'll have lunch on Saturday," she said. "Goodbye." The phone went down before he could protest. When he dialled her number next morning he still hadn't been able to identify what was haunting him, what unease lay just below the surface of his consciousness. He had had a curious dream. He was an observer, watching but invisible, at a meeting of the residents' association of a block of flats in Battersea Park. This mansion block was in fact where no buildings could be, in the centre of the Pleasure Gardens, overlooking the pier. The residents included Rachel Lingard, Robin Chisholm, and Poppy Vasari. They were discussing applications from people who wanted to come and live in the flats. One was from himself. Rachel read his letter and read out his name. "Guy Patrick Curran, 8 Scarsdale Mews, W.8." Dreams were strange because that wasn't quite his address. His address was 7 Scarsdale Mews. Robin Chisholm said nothing. He spat. He spat the way he had after Guy had hit him at Danilo's party. Poppy Vasari, who was even dirtier and more unkempt than in reality, said, "We don't want him. He's a murderer. He murdered my lover with a substance classified Class A under the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971." After that Guy wanted to leave. Even though they couldn't see him he wanted to escape. Knowing he was dreaming, that this was dream substance and dream time, he began willing himself to wake up. Before he did, a man he didn't know and had never seen before got to his feet and began to sing a song about opium. He sang that opium poppies first grew on the spot where Buddha's eyelids fell when he cut them off to stop himself from falling asleep. Guy woke up shouting and groaning. He tried to phone Leonora at ten in the morning. There was no answer. He made a second attempt at just before eleven and got Rachel Lingard. "You get a lot of holidays in the Social Services." She had an accent like the head of a women's college at Oxford making a television appearance. "I'm not on holiday. I'm at home in bed with a bug. You got me up." Guy restrained an impulse to say that was the only thing she was ever likely to be in bed with. It wouldn't be true anyway. Even the plainest, most repulsive girls got men these days. He didn't know why, but it was so. Rachel had never been without a man all the time he had known her, she always had some bearded or spotty-faced intellectual in tow. "Where's Leonora?" "I don't know. I was told to say if you rang that Robin is better and coming out today." "Well, fuck him. When you were 'told' that, where were you 'told' she'd be?" "Please don't take that hectoring tone with me. And you can leave out the 'fuck,' it's offensive. I get quite enough of that from the low-life I encounter at work. Perhaps you'd like to get this clear: I don't know where Leonora is because, knowing you'd ask, I was careful not to ask her. I'm not lying to you, I don't tell lies. Do I make myself plain?" "You don't need to, my love," said Guy, knowing he would regret it. "Nature did that for you." He slammed down the phone. He dialled William Newton's number. The line was engaged. That would be Rachel ringing Leonora to repeat to her what he had said. Anger began to rise inside him in that uncontrollable way it had. It was happening all the time these days. It would start in the way nausea started, a stifling feeling that worked its way up to his throat where it settled and needed not to be vomited but screamed out. Only he had never yet screamed it out. He walked across the room to the open double doors. It was sunny again, it was like being in Spain or Italy. The flowers on the water-lilies in the pool were all open to the sun. He turned back, picked up the Chinese vase that stood on the red lacquer cabinet just inside the doors, and smashed it down onto the stone flags. The shattering of the vase had an effect on him, if not quite the one he had aimed at. Certainly his anger was temporarily appeased, it had done that. It awed him, too, and brought him a kind of fear of himself. Why had he done it and without thought? He had simply done it, on an impulse. It was August Bank Holiday Monday, so not one of Fatima's days. He kicked the fragments, pushing them into a heap with his toe. The vase wasfamille noire, cherry blossom and linnets on a black glaze, worth about fifteen hundred pounds. Thinking of that made him shudder. He lifted the phone, dialed William Newton's number and got no reply. If he stayed there any longer he might break the place up, that was the way he felt, so he took a taxi to the rifle club and practised target shooting. Gladiators after that, the weights and some acrobatics on the parallel bars. He weighed himself and found he had lost those two pounds plus three more. In the steam room a gay Norwegian eyed him lustfully. What wouldn't he give for Leonora to look at him like that? He tried her again in the afternoon. There was still no answer. Suppose he couldn't get through to her all the week? They hadn't yet named a restaurant for their Saturday lunch date. Suppose he couldn't get in touch with her, what would happen to their Saturday lunch? Most likely she had gone to Robin's. She and Maeve would have gone to Robin's to be there when he came back from the hospital. Guy started looking up Robin's number in the phone book. It wasn't there. No Robin Chisholm was listed anywhere in Battersea. Then he realized that of course Robin didn't live in Battersea any more, he lived in Chelsea. He realized a few more things with startling suddenness. Why was he so confused these days? Why had he been telling himself for days now that Poppy Vasari had lived in the same block of flats as Robin when it was not she but Danilo's sister-in-law who had lived there? And wasn't there something else he hadn't thought of which was now staring him in the face? Robin couldn't have been told about Con Mulvanney by Poppy or anyone else in August four years ago because he was in hospital undergoing those brain tests. He couldn't have been told, and he couldn't have passed that information on to Leonora. He wasn't there. Leonora must have known about Con Mulvanney two weeks before they were due to go to Samos because that was when she had changed towards him, but it wasn't Robin who had told her. Robin was shut up in Baits or St. Thomas's or somewhere, interested no doubt in nothing but the fate of his own head. Guy had a quick image of a white-coated surgeon bending over Robin's bed and applying a scalpel to his throat instead of a stethoscope, or of an armoured truck ramming the taxi that was taking him home to Chelsea, of two hooded men with sub-machine-guns jumping out of the back of it. He reminded himself he wasn't living in a TV thriller and went back to the phone book. Chelsea. There it was: St. Leonard's Terrace, a very nice address. He must be doing well. Guy dialled the number. He wouldn't have been surprised not to get a reply, but Maeve answered. "Yes? Who is it?" What a way to answer the phone! For the first time he noticed her rather "common" voice, more akin to his own than to Robin's patrician accent. "It's Guy, Maeve. I just wanted to ask how Robin is." She was stunned into silence, as well she might be. Then she said in a tone in which suspicion seemed to war with a willingness to live and let live, "He's really quite okay." Evidently thinking furiously, she paused. "Thanks, Guy. I mean, well, thanks." "I'm glad to hear he's doing all right." For a moment he thought she was going to ask if he was kidding. She didn't. "They're very pleased with him. There won't be any, you know, ill effects or whatever from the concussion." "You tell him to take care." This was the true purpose of his call. "I shouldn't let him go out again today. Keep him quiet." He nearly said, Don't answer the door. She would think him crazy. "Say hello to him for me, will you?" "Sure, I will, yes, Guy, thanks." He hesitated. "Is Leonora there?" "No, she's not." The former tone, surprised, gratified, touched, had changed to Maeve's aggressive voice. "Why ever would she be? Of course she's not. Is that the real reason you rang?" He said goodbye. He tried to phone Danilo. This was never easy, as it was always possible for Danilo to be in any of about ten different places--clubs, two Soho offices, his old dad's place, one of the establishments of his brother the turf accountant, or at a race meeting. Five attempts having failed, he got Tanya at her Richmond boutique. Danilo was in Brussels, she didn't say why; he would be back tomorrow very late in the evening. Guy was by now almost certain it was Rachel Lingard and not Robin who had told Leonora about Con Mulvanney. That is, he was certain it wasn't Robin and not quite sure about Rachel--nearly sure but not absolutely. Removing Rachel from Leonora's immediate circle would in any case be a good thing. He wished he could, with a worJ or by the pressure of a switch, divert Danilo's hit squad from Robin to Rachel. He really didn't wish for Robin's death any longer, it would be inconvenient, it would be unnecessary. He poured himself a drink, the first of the day, a very strong Campari orange, three quarters Campari and about a spoonful of orange juice. As he was dialling Newton's number the doorbell rang. Guy's doorbell hardly ever rang unless someone was expected. Celeste had a modelling job out at Totteridge, it couldn't be her. Anyway, she had a key. Listening to the phone ringing on and on, in an empty place unanswered, he thought: it's Leonora. He put the phone down. Of course it was Leonora--what could be more likely? On the phone the day before he had felt her changing, returning to him, her better instincts taking over, all that perverse stubbornness of the past years faded, gone. "Oh, Guy, how I wish..." she had said. Wished what? That she could bring herself to swallow her pride, of course, to come back to him and be as they once were. The bell rang again. He set his drink down. A second thought made him thrust it behind a vase. He must not die of happiness when she came into his arms... It was all he could do not to run to the door. He strode there, threw it open, already smiling a delighted welcome. On the doorstep stood Tessa Mandeville.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Can I come in?" His disappointment was so terrible--worse, he thought, than on that day four years before when Leonora had said she wasn't coming to Samos with him--that he couldn't have spoken to her. He was quite dumb, staring like a fool, yet seeing her only through a haze. Unable even to answer her, he stood there while she pushed past him into the hall. At any other time, he would have been gleefully proud of showing off his house to one of the members of Leonora's family. None of them had ever been there. Well aware of the suburban Victoriana in which Tessa herself lived, he would have taken great pleasure in watching her note the evidences of his wealth--the carpets, the antiques, the Kandinski. She, of all people, would very likely know it was a Kandinski. But as it was, he cared not at all. He followed her silently into the drawing-room. She was dressed, as usual, very smartly. She had on a tobacco-brown linen dress which, though waistless and quite straight, could only have been worn by a very thin woman. To the hot weather she made few concessions, wore shoes the colour of polished acorns and stockings patterned with sprays of leaves. More lines had appeared on her face since last he saw her. She had a young woman's shape and legs and hair and a wizened face with lines as deep as scars. Her fingernails were painted the colour of a copper kettle in an antique shop. "It's quite brave of me to come here alone, isn't it?" she said. He found his voice. It came out like a sigh. "Brave?" "Though I'm warning you, at least half a dozen people know where I am. In case you want to try anything, you won't get away with it." "Don't be ridiculous," he said. "You persecute my daughter, you beat up my son, you attempt to run my son over in a car..." He was indignant at the unfairness of that. "I was having lunch with Leonora when that accident happened, I was in her flat." Then he realized there was in fact nothing unjust in her accusation. "Tessa, I went to Leonora's in a taxi. Anyway, I wasn't anywhere near Lancaster Gate. You can't believe I'd..." "Can't I? It's funny you knew all about it. Maeve said you corrected her, you told her exactly where it had happened. You kept on saying things like 'Brook Street' and 'Victoria Gate' as if you'd been there. I think you're mad. All you want is to wipe out the people who're close to my daughter, kill them or disable them. I should never have let her have anything to do with you, I blame myself for that. I should have put my foot down all those years ago. You'll do some harm to William next. I know what you're up to, I know everything. I saw you parked outside my house that time in that flashy car of yours." There was an uncanny accuracy in what she said. She was quite close to the truth. He moved away from her, opened the French windows. He no more fancied being closeted in here with her than she did with him. The heat came in, the scent of his climbing rose. He saw the pile of broken china still on the paving stones and she saw it too. "Been smashing the place up, have you?" "What did you come here for, Tessa?" He hadn't asked her to sit down but she did. Probably his calmness, his air of indifference, had reassured her he meant to do her no harm. She stared at him without speaking. He picked up his drink and, aware of the absurdity of it, asked her if she would like one. "Of course I don't want a drink!" She almost spat the words. "What do you want then?" "To tell you this. First of all, my husband will get a court order to stop you molesting Leonora if you don't leave her alone from this moment. Is that clear? Secondly, Leonora is getting married on September the sixteenth. At twelve noon at Kensington Register Office. I'm here to give you a very serious warning, very serious indeed, not to start anything on that occasion. Right?" "What would I start?" he said, very nearly amused by her. She was a figure of fun, glaring at him like that, long bony fingers with those copper-kettle nails clasping exposed polished knees. The intensity of her frown contorted her face grotesquely. "Anything, I don't know, a--a ruckus! You're quite capable of turning up there and shouting things--well, forbidding the banns or something." "They don't have banns," he said, though uncertain what banns were. "You're capable of attacking William, grabbing my daughter--oh, anything! Shouting that you've got some insane prior claim on her." "So I have." "So you have not, Guy Curran! How dare you speak like that! She loves William and he loves her and they're going to be tremendously happy. I will not have a clod like you, a common piece of rubbish from a council house, from the worst part of London, interfering with my daughter!" Anger began to well up inside him. Her snobbery had cut into him where her threats never could. He would have liked to tell her this was his house and to get out of it, not to speak like that to him in his house, but he thought of Leonora, of all this getting back to Leonora. It was bad enough, the way he had insulted Rachel, or she would think so. He must stay calm. With extreme controlled calmness he said, "She isn't going to marry him. She'll never marry him." Tessa Mandeville went quite white. "You filthy drugtrafficker," she said. "Oh, yes, you can look like that. I tell you, I know everything about you. A very good friend of Leonora's told me all about your drug peddling, ruining young people's lives, giving their parents a hell on earth." "What friend?" he said. "Oh, yes, I'm likely to tell you, aren't I? So that you can go and beat them up, I suppose. A good friend, that's all I'm saying. Someone who's been a better friend to Leonora than you ever could be." He said, "I don't want to put you out of here, Tessa. You're Leonora's mother and I can't forget that. I'm going upstairs and while I'm away perhaps you'll go." It was to be alone really, not just to get away from her. So he had been right about Rachel. It was Rachel who had done and who was doing all the damage, Rachel who was probably with Leonora even at this moment, feeding her poison. Leonora had been more gentle with him, more loving, that day than at any time he could remember since she moved into the flat. True, it had been on the phone. But Saturday it hadn't been on the phone. "Oh, Guy, how I wish..." What had she been going to say? How I wish we could be as we once were? How I wish I'd never met William? Now, though, she would be back home with Rachel, sick, bed-bound Rachel. He could imagine her sitting on the side of Rachel's bed and Rachel repeating what he had said to her, adding, "What can you expect from low-life like that?" Downstairs he heard Tessa's footsteps. They stopped. She had paused. Of course. She had stopped in front of the Kandinski, was taking it in, valuing it. The footsteps started again, the front door closed hard if not quite with a bang. He went into his bedroom and watched her from the window. She was going in the Marloes Road direction, looking for a taxi. He hoped she wouldn't get one, she probably wouldn't, not at this hour. So it was Rachel. The connection must have been the one he first thought of, through the social work she and Poppy Vasari had in common. He went downstairs and was starting to dial one of the numbers he had for Danilo when he remembered what Tanya had told him, that Danilo was in Brussels. It slightly troubled him that he was as yet unable to call off the dogs that menaced Robin Chisholm, but there seemed nothing to be done about this. Something was puzzling him and continued to do so on and off throughout the night. Dining with Celeste at the Pomme d'Amour, meeting Bob Joseph afterwards for a drink at the club in Noel Street, his mind kept reverting to Tessa Mandeville and the things she had said. What had she really come for? That was all rubbish about getting a court order preventing him from "molesting" Leonora. How could you molest someone when she wanted your company? It was Leonora herself who, three and a half years before, had made that arrangement to lunch with him on Saturdays. When Rachel and the rest of them no doubt had persuaded her to stop going out with him in any real sense, to stop being his girl-friend, she had proposed the regular Saturday meetings. Leonora wanted those lunch dates as much as he did, that was certain. She wanted him to phone her. Hadn't she said when he left her on Saturday, "Phone me tomorrow"? So Tessa hadn't really meant that at all. That was just a cover for something else. What she had come for was ostensibly to stop him from making some sort of scene at Leonora's wedding but really to tell him where Leonora's wedding would be, a venue he knew quite well already. He was suspicious of them all and now he was even more suspicious of Tessa. What was she up to? Why come all that way, visit him at home as she had never done before, just to tell him that? Then he understood. He nearly laughed out loud, there in front of Celeste. The woman had told him Kensington Register Office because it wasn't going to be there at all. It was going to be at the Camden Register Office, which was at King's Cross, and in Newton's borough. You could get married in your own borough or that of the person you were marrying, it was matter of choice. She had told him Kensington in case he decided to go along. The woman was so transparent it was really quite funny. Not that it mattered. Leonora wouldn't get married. She wouldn't want to get married. He heard her voice again and the tone seemed infinitely soft and yearning as she expressed her wish for what might have been. "Guy, dear," she had called him when she had explained she couldn't dine with him. They probably threatened her with all kinds of things when she told them she was thinking of going back to him. Rachel, for instance, who was buying Leonora's share of the flat from her--Rachel had very likely told her the deal would be off if she persisted in having any further to do with him. Anthony Chisholm was capable of cutting her out of his will or at least of stopping any money he might be making over to her. "Guy, sweet," said Celeste, "a penny for your thoughts." He told her about Tessa's visit. Her face clouded over. She said nothing. "I've got a headache," he said. "I usually have these days. D'you think it's being angry most of the time?" She went home with him. "You have to accept it," she said gently. "Sooner or later you have to accept she's going to marry William." "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" She knelt on the paving, picking up the pieces of broken vase. He wished he hadn't said what he had said, but she didn't reply. Danilo would be back tomorrow night, he'd keep on trying to phone him from ten onwards. Probably, to compensate for all the trouble he was causing, he'd have to give Danilo another fifteen hundred, but who cared? Celeste said, "Buy her a really nice wedding present, why don't you?" She was never bitchy, but this time...? Surely she didn't mean it seriously? He poured himself a last drink, vodka on the rocks, realizing as he did so that he had been drinking non-stop since the Campari orange he had when Tessa came at five. In the morning, while Celeste was still asleep, he phoned the flat in Portland Road. Maeve answered. She was about to leave for work. He didn't ask for Leonora, not immediately. "How's Robin?" He really wanted to know. Worrying about Danilo's hitman getting at Robin had kept him awake most of the night. "He's fine," she said. But did she know? Had he just been fine when she left him the night before? "You've spoken to him this morning?" "Just now, Guy." Oh, the relief! It wasn't that he cared about Robin Chisholm's fate but he realized, after that black eye and what Tessa had said, that Leonora might so easily blame him for any harm that came to her brother. "He rang me. He'd had such a super sleep, he was feeling really refreshed, you know, he sounded on top of the world. Isn't that great?" Guy said it was and could he speak to Leonora? "She isn't here, Guy. She's at William's." He phoned the Georgiana Street number. It was early, of course, it wasn't yet nine, but he was still surprised to hear Newton's voice--no, more than that, astounded, thrown. He nearly put the receiver down. Instead he said, "It's Guy Curran." "Oh, hallo." It wasn't said in a friendly way. But Guy would have despised the man even more than he already did if he had spoken in a hearty or ingratiating manner. "How're you?" he said in his best transatlantic style, but coldly. "I'm extremely well and I hope you are. Now, what can I do for you?" "I'd like to speak to Leonora." Most people, before imparting unwelcome information, say that they are afraid. "I'm afraid I've something rather unpleasant to tell you..." Newton didn't do that and Guy noticed. "She's not here." "Now come on," said Guy, the ready anger rising. "I've just been told less than five minutes ago that's she's with you." The man sounded bored, still within the limits of patience. "Less than five minutes ago she was. Two minutes ago she went out. Would you like me to tell you where?" "Of course I would. Where is she?" "At her father's. Susannah's mother has died and Leonora has gone with her to see to things, register the death and see undertakers. I've now told you all I know, so if you'll excuse me, I'll ring off as I'm already late. Goodbye." He had no idea where Susannah's mother had lived, had barely known Susannah had a mother. Hopeless to try and find them, hopeless to pursue that inviting image of himself sitting in a waiting room with Leonora, talking to her softly, then taking the two of them out to a wonderful lunch somewhere. A comfort for Susannah, whom he had never disliked, take her mind off her mother, whom she had probably been fond of. He would have to catch Leonora later in Lamb's Conduit Street. He took a cup of tea up to Celeste. "Thank you, sweet Guy," she said. She opened her eyes and then she put out her arms to him. It was weeks since he had made love to her. Sexual desire seemed to have been drained out of him by all that had happened, by fear and anger. But he bent down and let her hug him. She was warm and sweet and she felt silky to touch. He lay down beside her and held her, not realizing how very hard he must have clutched her until she struggled and freed her nose and mouth from the pressure of his face, until she gasped, "No, Guy, you're hurting!" While she was in the bath he called Anthony Chisholm's number. The line was engaged. Five minutes later it was still engaged. He got the operator to check it, was told the number was indeed engaged speaking, and decided to give up until the afternoon. Fatima arrived as he was leaving the house. She made a noise like a distressed hen-bird with a lost chick when she saw the black-and-pink shards. Guy got his car out. He was going to Northolt to the studio, then to make a check on a picture sale at a motorway hotel at the start of the M. I. Backing the car across the cobbled mews, driving slowly down towards the Earl's Court Road, he wondered if perhaps he had outgrown his house. In his position he was past the little mews-house stage. After all, he would be thirty in January. A house in Lansdowne Crescent or maybe even something in the neighbourhood of Campden Hill, Duchess of Bedford Walk... Would Leonora mind being that side, the good side, of Holland Park Avenue? Carry On, Kittens did better in Barnet than even Lady from Thailand. The woman who was running the sale and with whom he had a nasty lunch in the motel dining room (oval plates piled with gristle-bound blackened steak, tinned peas, tomato halves, chips, mushrooms as slimy as slugs, and broccoli spears like toy farmyard trees) told him she could sell twice, three times, as many. Guy undertook to provide that number. On the motel phone he tried to call Lamb's Conduit Street and failed but succeeded in getting Tanya at her boutique. Danilo was expected home in the late evening, certainly by eleven. Guy had a ferociously unpleasant image of Robin Chisholm pressing the button on his entry-phone, opening the door in his towelling robe to the man who had come to mend something or read some meter. The silenced gun or cosh, or, if Danilo's "help" was being really vicious these days, the thin swift stiletto. He drove to the travel agent's. Business was booming there too. In the office at the back he phoned the flat in St. Leonard's Terrace. There wasn't going to be an answer, the bell rang and rang, ten times, fifteen. He put the receiver back and redialled. This time Robin's voice answered after four rings. Probably he'd misdialled that first time. It was a great relief to hear Robin saying, "Hallo, hallo?" with increasing irritability. They buoyed him up wonderfully, the considerable and varied successes of the day. Things hadn't gone so well for a long time. Going home, even going to the West End, it would have been usual to take a route north of Regent's Park, but he found himself approaching the Huston Road. Across Tavistock Place, into Guilford Street, and Lamb's Conduit was just down there... He wasn't supposed to see her except on Saturdays, except for Saturday lunch, but--well, come on. She wanted to see him. Hadn't she said how much she wished they could be together again? It was hot, the still, yellow heat of London in sunshine. Any place he had been in with her and been happy brought him pain. It was as if he had two levels of feeling about her, the upper, in which he was optimistic, cheerful, confident, and the lower where fear was, and doubt. The places they had been together evoked images in that lower world. He remembered rejections, he remembered, with something that was more like panic than pain, that it was now six years since they had made love. The houses in this part of London are old, early rather than late nineteenth century. Their brickwork is a dark greyishbrown, their doorways and windows are long and narrow, their roofs invisible. Very little green was to be seen except distant tree-tops showing like vegetation in a walled garden. Susannah had window-boxes that contained, instead of the usual geraniums, small-leaved ivies and plants with yellowgrey fluffy foliage. Guy rang the bell, preparing himself, as he always had to, for his first sight of Leonora. The door was answered by a woman he recognized but couldn't immediately place. She seemed to be having the same difficulties identifying him. "Guy Curran," he said. "Oh, yes. I'm Janice. We met at Nora's birthday party." He hated the diminutive that was allowed to her family but not to him. The woman who had used it he now remembered as the cousin who had been going to Australia to get married. She was rather plump with a pale moon face, prominent eyes, and a great deal of long mousy hair worn in a French plait. Guy particularly disapproved of Indian cotton dresses (cheap, badly cut, and shapeless), and she of course had one on, tan-coloured with black hieroglyphs and white bits. Her hips were round and the effect in his opinion was of someone going to a fancy dress party as a granary loaf. "I thought you were an undertaker, actually," she now said. "Susannah's expecting an undertaker. You know her mother died?" "Yes. Someone told me. Can I come in?" Janice admitted him grudgingly. He felt she was looking him up and down as if he was committing some awful social faux pas. "She's just lost her mother. I mean, mostly people write or phone." "It's Leonora I've come to see," he said impatiently. But at that moment Susannah herself put her head over the banisters. The living room was on the upper floor of the flat, the bedrooms on the lower. Susannah didn't react towards him as did all the other women close to Leonora--including this indignant Australian--in an aggressive or judgemental way. She called out to him and said how nice of him it was to have come. Obviously she hadn't heard his remark to Janice. When he got to the top of the stairs she came up to him and, putting her arms round him, kissed him in an almost motherly way, though she wasn't anywhere near old enough to be his mother. It was quite a shock to be kissed nicely by a woman, though of course Celeste did it all the time. But this was different. Susannah very evidently took the purpose of his visit to be of condolence. Well, that was all right with him. He felt warm towards her and approving. Susannah might be sad and in mourning but it didn't show. She was carefully and quite heavily made-up, which Guy thought proper for women, her thick wiry dark hair was teased into a fashionable sea-urchin shape, she wore black silk trousers with a chocolate-andblack-striped top and a lot of rather elegant silver jewellery of the chain-mail kind, including a wide glittering belt. What a pity Leonora couldn't or wouldn't learn from her example! As he followed her into the living room, where he hadn't been for nearly four years, he thought of the time when Leonora had lived here after leaving teacher-training college, and of calling to take her out and being given drinks by Anthony Chisholm. Well, it wasn't so long ago... The first thing he saw, even before he saw Leonora, was a white card on the mantelpiece with a silver edge. A wedding invitation, it had to be, but he couldn't read the print at this distance. Leonora got up when he came in. His heart had already done its turning-over stuff, sending a beat up into his head. She looked horrible but what did he care? She kissed him. There was no hugging and not much warmth, but then she hadn't just lost her mother. (More's the pity, thought Guy.) Janice, behind him, was going into some long tale about recognizing him and not recognizing him, then thinking he was an undertaker or a florist. Leonora wore black-and-white plastic earrings. Not a scrap of make-up, of course, and her hair looked greasy. She had green track-suit pants on and a black sweat-shirt, rusting with age and bad washing. Since knowing Newton, Guy thought, whatever dress sense she had once possessed had gone to pot. The fool probably told her he loved her for herself, not her appearance. At any rate she didn't ask him what he was doing there. He remembered in time to say something appropriate about Susannah's mother. "It was really thoughtful of you to come, Guy," Leonora said, beaming. He thought her smile was surely fuller and freer than he had seen it for months. "We've had such a day. Some of those people are so insensitive. D'you know what the registrar said to poor Susannah? It was a woman, apparently they mostly are. Men won't take the jobs, they're too badly paid; it's the old old story. She said, 'Is this the first death you've ever registered?' And when Susannah said it was, she said, 'I don't suppose it'll be the last. Good morning.' Can you imagine?" Janice had departed to make a cup of tea, having had some whispered communication with Susannah. Leonora began explaining how her cousin was staying with Anthony and Susannah, her cousin's husband would be coming over next week, and it was very sad for poor Janice, who had been particularly fond of Susannah's mother and arrived too late to see her alive. No other family Guy had ever come across had been so closely interlocked as these Chisholms. Even those on the outer fringes of the root system, people not even related, were mad about each other. Leonora was giving the impression this Janice had come twelve thousand miles to be at the deathbed of an old woman, the mother of her aunt by marriage, whom she had probably only met once or twice in her whole life. How right he was not to underestimate the influences that worked on Leonora! From where he sat he kept trying to see the mantelpiece and the card on it but Susannah insisted on remaining standing, and in front of the carefully preserved Georgian fireplace, leaning on the mantelshelf. He didn't like to dodge his head about too obviously. Susannah had begun talking about the funeral. "We find ourselves in a dilemma, Guy. We really don't know what to do. Shall we ask his advice, Leonora? Perhaps a fresh mind, do you think?" Leonora gave him another lovely smile. "We'll see what he says." "Now my poor dear mother didn't leave any instructions about--well, I mustn't mind saying it bluntly--about whether she wanted to be buried or cremated. Of course most people are cremated these days, but cremation seems so... I nearly said 'so final,' as if death itself wasn't final, but perhaps you know what I mean." "Oh, I know what you mean," said Guy, craning his neck. "And then it's a question of where? All the nice London cemeteries are full and it means going right out into the sticks. My mother lived in Earlsfield, but the churchyard there of course is out of the question and has been for about a century, I should think..." Janice came in with the tea, which she placed on a table in such a way as to oblige Guy to turn his chair around, with its back to the fireplace. It was near enough to real drinking time for him not to want tea but he drank it, refusing a slice of the peaches and cream torte that fat little Janice should have known better than to tuck into. A plan was forming in his mind of managing to drive Leonora home--well, of getting her in his car, starting to drive her home and then persuading her not to go back but to have dinner with him. Janice was telling an elaborate story--in the worst of taste, Guy thought--about the adventures of someone she knew scattering a loved one's ashes from the Cobb in Lyme Regis. Susannah said that was a coincidence because she and Anthony were going for a short holiday in Lyme in a couple of weeks' time. The doorbell called Janice away from further anecdote. Though repeatedly told by the others to sit down and do nothing, she seemed to have appointed herself a temporary au pair. To Guy's great pleasure he and Leonora found themselves for a moment or two alone. The undertaker had arrived and Susannah was summoned downstairs. "I do hope she's made up her mind," said Leonora. "She'll have to tell him one way or another." "Have dinner with me, Leo." "Oh, I can't, Guy. I'm awfully sorry, but I can't." Not "I never do" or "I have lunch with you on Saturdays," not that any more. "I'm staying here and William's coming over. We're all going out for dinner so that poor Susannah doesn't have to cook." There went his plan to drive her home... But, "I'm really sorry," she said. "It would have been nice. Maeve told me you rang up this morning to ask after Robin. That was kind of you, I do appreciate it." He dared to reach across the sofa and take her hand. He knew she would snatch her hand away but she didn't. She even let the fingers nestle softly in his and she turned on him a look of such sweetness, such compassion, that if Janice hadn't come back at that moment he would have lost control of himself, he would have had to jump up and seize her in his arms. He did jump up, but only to go. There was little pleasure in being here with that fat gimlet-eyed one staring censoriously at him. "Lunch on Saturday?" he said. "Yes, Guy dear, of course. Where shall we go?" "The Savoy," he said. "We'll go to the River Room at the Savoy." She didn't protest. She was changing towards him, she was changing back. He kissed her goodbye, stood up, turned to face the fireplace and saw that the wedding card had gone. It had been there when he came in half an hour before and now it was gone. Someone had quietly moved it so that he shouldn't see.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

He had known Leonora for quite a long time before he met her brother. One winter's day, just before or just after Christmas, he went with Leonora into the living room of her parents' house where a boy was standing by the window with a paper in his hand that he was reading. He must have heard them come in but he didn't look round immediately, he read to the end of the page. There was something headmasterly in this behavior or even policemanlike, something deliberate and scornful, though the boy himself looked almost babyish. He was tall enough, a lot taller than his sister, but his face when he finally turned his head was that of a five-year-old, plump, innocent, with toddler's skin and a rose-bud mouth. The voice that issued from those baby lips was therefore all the more amazing. Instead of shrill and lisping, it was deep and rich, it was plummy, with an accent that can only be acquired (Guy learned later from Leonora) by attendance at one of those schools within the Headmaster's Conference. "Is this your beau, Nora?" Guy had heard the word before, but only on television. He would--then and now--have given a lot to have a voice like that. Leonora introduced him. "Robin, this is Guy. Guy, this is my brother." Already, at the age of fifteen, Robin Chisholm was practising that teasing mockery that was such a feature of his unpleasant character. It wasn't clever or amusing, it was just rude. "Guy," he said. He said it slowly and with a certain puzzlement. He said it again, thoughtfully, as if it were the name of someone he had known long ago but couldn't quite place. "Guy. Yes--don't you find it difficult being called that? I mean, if Nora hadn't said, I'd have put you down as a Kevin, say, or a Barry. Yes, Barry would suit you." He looked like an innocent child, smiling, wide-eyed, his cheeks plump and rosy, defying the object of his insults to take offence. For they were insults, Guy was in no doubt about that. Leonora's brother was implying that his name was far too upper-class for its possessor. She defended him. "Oh, shut up. You're in no position to mock people's names. Robin may be all right now while you look like an infant but it'll be no joke when you're old." Even then, in a very unnatural way, Robin Chisholm was proud of looking younger than he was. Most people are at thirty but not at fifteen, for God's sake. Guy, seeing him occasionally, not often but too often for his own comfort, thought he purposely cultivated the baby-face look. He wouldn't have been surprised to see Robin with his thumb in his mouth. Well, he would have been surprised, he'd have run screaming from the room. The Chisholms had sent their daughter to a state school and a prestigious university. Their son attended a public school with high fees but dropped out of the polytechnic he'd just squeezed into and went instead "into the city." He was twenty-three when he started having those black-outs. They thought it was a tumour on the brain, then epilepsy. There turned out to be nothing wrong with him. Guy privately thought Robin had carefully planned and staged it all to extricate himself from the firm he was working for, an investment company that was plunged into a financial scandal of mammoth proportions a week or two after he entered hospital. He was the sort of person the world would be better without. Someone else could see to his destruction, though, not Guy. It wasn't he who had told Leonora about Con Mulvanney. Further to that, Guy, who, having failed to get hold of Danilo that evening, had been considering the matter for half the night, decided that her brother, of all those who surrounded her, probably influenced her the least. Of course she loved him, that went without saying--she said it often enough for all that, said it of far too many people, Guy thought--but Robin irritated her, she didn't altogether approve of him. All this made him dream of Robin. Robin was dead, pushed down all those flights of stairs in Portland Road, his bleeding body discovered by Maeve. This wasn't at all a fantastic or irrational dream, and it therefore alarmed Guy all the more. He couldn't phone St. Leonard's Terrace before eight-thirty or Danilo before nine at the earliest. Making coffee for himself, he kept touching wood as he moved about the kitchen. It was an old habit of superstition he had believed long shed. If you touched wood, the action fended off disaster. It kept away--what? Evil spirits? His grandmother, from whom he had learned wood-touching, not helping others to salt, not passing a knife to a friend, avoiding the divisions between paving stones, hadn't specified the precise function of these acts. They just kept you safe. Funny he should think of her now when he hadn't for years. Luckily, the kitchen, lavishly refitted in limed oak, was a paradise for wood-touchers. A sleepy Danilo answered the Weybridge phone at ten past nine. Guy was nearly out of his mind because there had been no answer from St. Leonard's Terrace in spite of his trying ten times between eight-thirty and now. He was sure Robin must be dead, and with his death Leonora lost forever, but he called Danilo's hit man off just the same. Danilo took his change of heart with a show of ill temper but agreed to meet him for a drink at a club called The Black Spot at six. Certain now that he was too late, that Robin's corpse was even at this moment being identified by Maeve in some mortuary, Guy nevertheless had another try at the Chelsea number. Rather a strange thing happened. The phone was picked up but before anyone spoke into the mouthpiece Guy heard Robin's voice bellowing from a distance. "Answer the bloody thing, can you? I'm in the bath." Then accents like his grandmother's, it must be the Irish cleaning woman, said, "Hallo, who's speaking? Mr. Chisholm's busy." Guy gasped with relief. He was on the point of saying, "Tell him to go back to bed and stay there," but thought better of it. The Black Spot was all bar and floor. There were no tables, nowhere to sit except on a stool up at the long black-and-silver counter. It was very dark, American-style. The first person Guy saw was Carlo sitting on a stool next to his father and drinking something dark and frothy from a brandy glass. It was probably Coke but the glass it was in made it look sophisticated, even sinister. Guy was rather surprised. Then he reflected that he would very much have liked to go into bars like this one when he was ten, only he never got the chance. Carlo was wearing junior designer jeans and a black sweat-shirt with BREAD-HEAD'S KID printed on it in luminescent pink. He said, "Hi" to Guy and continued eating prawn fries out of an ashtray. Danilo was in caramel-coloured herringbone silk tweed, a suit with an enormous wide-shouldered jacket, and under it an open-necked crimson shirt. "You're not looking too good," said Danilo. Guy shrugged impatiently. That was what Danilo always said every time they met. "It's the light in here, if you can call it light." He asked the barman for a large vodka martini. "We can't talk," he said to Danilo, cocking a thumb in Carlo's direction. "I can't help it, mate. What was I to do? One of the nannies has got flu, the other's walked out. Tanya's sister'll have the other kids, she won't have him. Last time he was there he put her Apocalypse Now video in the microwave. He said he wanted to see what would happen. "Mervyn," he said to the barman, "take him round the back and let him watch Mork and Mindy. Five minutes, that's all I ask." "It's not on, Dad. There's only Buck Rogers in the Twenty-fifth Century." "Go round the back and watch that then." Danilo had to have another glass of the red wine he favoured. "Don't ever do that to me again," he said dramatically to Guy. "Don't ever." "Don't ever do what?" "Bell me with that changed-me-mind crap." He lowered his voice deeply. "You could have made a murderer out of poor old Chuck, d'you realize that?" Poor old Chuck, whoever he might be, was certainly a murderer already, several times over. Besides, what was the difference? It was either one victim or the other. Guy knew arguing with Danilo was quite useless. He said he was sorry, he realized he'd been a bit thoughtless. "Immature," said Danilo, "that's what you've been. Call a spade a spade. Now you listen to me, Guy. We've nearly had a very nasty accident in this particular area. I want you to think carefully. Do you or do you not want me to pursue this matter? The original party you wanted wasted I quite understand is out of the firing line, and for personal reasons I'm not sorry, but from what you said on the blower this morning I got a sort of hint you'd someone else in mind. No, don't answer now. Name no names. I want you to think very carefully, like I said." "I have thought." They were alone in the bar but for a man and a girl kissing up at the far end. Guy thought, that's just what the fuzz would do, it's an old one, that, a WPC and a DS in a clinch but all ears really. Just the same he said, very softly, "Rachel Lingard," and he gave the address in Portland Road. Because Chuck might only need to recognize her and not know her name, he took one of his cards out of his pocket and wrote on it: "Short, round-faced, fat, glasses, dark hair scraped back, about 27," a cruel but accurate description of Rachel, so that there could be no confusion with Maeve or--for God's sake!--Leonora. In the light of this, it struck him as odd there was no reply at all from their flat when he phoned at nine, at midday, at four, and at ten. In the meantime he also phoned Georgiana Street. No one answered there until ten-thirty at night, when Newton finally replied to his fourth call. "Leonora's in bed. She was tired and she went to bed early." "She'll talk to me." "She won't. I've told you, she's in bed." "Surely you've got a bedside extension." Newton said obscurely, "I'm a poor man, Your Majesty," and put the phone down. It was much the same next day. Guy had to see his accountant, phoned the flat in Portland Road from the restaurant where he was giving the man lunch. He tried Georgiana Street, then St. Leonard's Terrace. Maeve answered. "I'm living here. I was going to move in with Robin after Leonora's wedding anyway, so we thought I might as well now." "Do you happened to know where Leonora is?" "I should think you say that in your sleep, don't you? It'll be on your tombstone. 'Guy Curran, 1960 to whatever, RIP, Where's Leonora?' No, I don't know where she is. You're a bloody menace, d'you know that?" He had to go back to the accountant. Coffee had been brought in the meantime. Guy had a large brandy with his. A taxi took him back to Scarsdale Mews and his own telephone. The room and the green garden seen through the French windows seemed to turn red, dyed by his anger. To keep his anger down he had to hear her voice; it was like a tranquillizing drug. He needed his fix of her voice. She wasn't at Portland Road, she wasn't at Georgiana Street. Where does she go, he thought, where does she hide? Probably Rachel hides her, takes her to work with her, anything to keep her from me. Later on he phoned Lamb's Conduit Street. Janice picked up the receiver. She'd only been out there four or five years but she already had an Australian accent. For some reason the sound of his voice made her giggle. It was as if she and Susannah had just been talking about him--no, more as if she was recalling some trick played on him. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was laughing about something when you phoned and I couldn't stop. I'll fetch Susannah." A nice woman, Susannah. You often couldn't understand why people married other people, mostly you couldn't, but in this case he could easily see what there was about Susannah that had appealed to Anthony Chisholm. "Hallo, Guy," she said with real warmth, putting a thrilling emphasis on his name as if she were really pleased to hear from him, as if he were someone she loved and hadn't heard from for months. "It was so nice to see you the other day. It must be ages since we last met." He had meant to be cool and light, to make small talk. But her words moved him. He was near the edge today anyway, he was nearly out of control. "Too long," he said, and, "you were always good to me, Susannah. You alone of all of them. Even Leonora's father turned against me." "Now, Guy, I'm sure that's not true. Anthony and I have always liked you. The thing is... Excuse me just a moment." He heard her lay the phone down and go to close the door. This was so that that giggling little Janice didn't hear. "Guy, Leonora's a grown-up woman, she has her own life. I understand how bitter it must be for you to see her prefer William, but if she does, what can anyone do about it? As a matter of fact, I'd like you to know I think your--well, your constancy to Leonora is a very beautiful thing. You've been like one of those knights of old who were devoted for years to their ladies. You really have. But, Guy, my dear, it has to be over now--you see that, don't you?" "It will never be over," he said, speaking low. "What did you say?" "It will never be over, Susannah. You see, I believe, I know, she'll return to me. I know we'll be together for the rest of our lives and we'll look back on this as a temporary madness." "If you like to look at things like that, I can't stop you. I'd just like to save you from prolonging your unhappiness, that's all." Why not come right out with it? "There was an invitation to the wedding on your mantelpiece yesterday. It was there when I came, but before I left someone had taken it away." She answered immediately with no hesitation. "Oh, no, Guy. You must be mistaken. Anyway, we wouldn't have an invitation, would we? We're giving the wedding." That was unanswerable. Was it possible he'd imagined it? He thought, Susannah wouldn't lie to me, not Susannah. He asked her if she knew where Leonora was. No, but she expected to see her tomorrow. Leonora was coming to her mother's funeral. Probably the lot of them would go, Guy thought after he had rung off. Tessa and Magnus Mandeville, Robin and Maeve, William Newton, and even some of the Newton relations. They were all drawn into the great Chisholm spider's web. A little fantasy showed Guy a glimpse of a future in which, now Leonora and he were married, the Chisholms drew in his family, or what there was of it, what could be found. They were capable of going hunting for his mother, for his grandmother, if the old girl was still alive. He imagined them all at some vast dinner table, celebrating something. Robin's wedding? His wedding to Leonora? Why not? Why not? He made several more attempts at Georgiana Street and Portland Road. No reply at either. Newton was preventing her from answering the phone or Rachel Lingard was. The latter was actually more likely, for Leonora would have had to go home to find suitable clothes to wear at the funeral. Still, tomorrow should not only see the end of Susannah's mother but also of Rachel. No doubt Chuck or Chuck's man had so far had no opportunity of doing the trick. Guy would know if he had. It wasn't that he expected Danilo to phone and tell him the deed was done. Leonora would. Leonora would turn to him in trouble. It brought him a small qualm to think how unhappy she would be. She was really fond of that ugly, fat, egotripping Rachel with her superior manner and her ruthless manipulating of other people's lives. Learning that Rachel had died in a car accident (or been lethally mugged or fallen off a river bridge) would upset her so much that she certainly wouldn't go ahead with that absurd wedding. She would turn to him for comfort. In the morning he phoned the flat in Portland Road as early as he reasonably could, just after eight. He was in his bedroom and he touched wood, this time the Linnell bedhead. Someone took off the receiver but didn't speak. He knew who it was. "I know that's you, Rachel," he said. "It's pointless pretending with me." He wanted to say what the kids where he came from said when they begged from a woman and got nothing: "Die, bitch, die." But she really would die and someone might overhear. "I'd like to speak to Leonora, please." She put the phone down. He dialled the number again and let it ring. When it was clear she wasn't going to answer and was stopping Leonora from answering, he laid the receiver down so that the ringing would go on and on to torment her. Perhaps he should go to Susannah's mother's funeral but he didn't know where it was. It was now three days since he had spoken to Leonora. Had it ever been so long, apart from at holiday time or when she was at college? Even when she had the bed-sit and the phone was downstairs, it had never been as long as three days. He panicked when he thought that way, so he made an effort to rid his mind of it. The receiver restored to its rest, he went off in the Jaguar to a paintings sale at Wallington in Surrey. Driving back, he came to the gates of Croydon Crematorium. This would be the place, he thought, and he parked the car half-way up the pavement and waited. It came to him how wonderful it would be just to see her. If he did, he would leave the car and go in, follow the mourners, sit discreetly at the back of the crematorium chapel. He imagined her the way he would dress her to go, for example, to her own mother's funeral, an event devoutly to be wished for in four or five years, say, after their own wedding. A simple black dress by Jean Muir with a single flounce six inches from the hem, a wide-brimmed black hat, black suede pumps, and gleaming black stockings with seams. He liked the idea of her in a veil, her face mysteriously hidden, disclosed only to him. They would walk in side by side, he supporting her, she clinging to his arm. He imagined her in the front pew kneeling to pray a little before the service started. The long thin coffin containing Tessa's long thin body appeared, borne by half a dozen bearers--Magnus, Anthony, Michael Chisholm, Robin--but he would be there too, surely, among them? Trying to solve the dilemma of how to be at Leonora's side and at the same time an undisputed member of the inner family, Guy looked up to see a slow sad procession of cars moving out from the gates. He jumped out of the Jaguar. The first car was full of very old people, white heads like dandelion clocks. He peered, he scanned them. The second car was full of very old people. Two slightly younger grey-headed people sat in the third car. Someone said behind him, "Excuse me, you can't park there." It was a traffic warden. He drove home. Fatima was still there, polishing. Guy went upstairs and tried to phone Leonora on his bedside extension. It reminded him of what Newton had said, mocking him, calling him "Your Majesty." No one answered, either in Portland Road or Georgiana Street. She wouldn't forget about lunch with him, would she? They had made no arrangements as to time. But perhaps there was no need for that, they always met at one. The Savoy, he thought, at one. The front door closed as Fatima let herself out. He went down and made himself a large drink, vodka and ice and a few drops of angostura. That wedding invitation kept returning to his mind. It occurred to him for the first time that if they were sending out invitations to this ridiculous wedding, it was odd that they hadn't sent one to him. Odd, that is, in their assessment of things. Not in his. In his it would be grotesque inviting him to Leonora's marriage to someone else. But they wouldn't see it like that. They would see him as an old friend with the same sort of right to be invited as that bitch Rachel--more right, because he'd known Leonora longer. So why hadn't they invited him? Because they weren't sending out invitations? Because that silveredged card had never been there. He'd imagined it. He had got into a state and imagined it. The garden was green again, the waters of the pool lay still and gleaming, bearing dense sheaves of lilies, leaves that were green above, crimsonlined, their flowers a veined streaky rose or ivory. He noticed that the roses were over and he walked about removing the deadheads. It was quite quiet out there, tucked away in the mews, the traffic a distant throb. There was peace here and an air of healing. You would never lose your mind, have strange, inexplicable things happen inside your head and to your imagination, if you sat calmly here. After about an hour the phone rang. Intuition told him it would be Leonora, he knew it would be Leonora. It was years since she had phoned him but he knew it was she. He went indoors so fast that he knocked over the red lacquer table inside the door on which the Chinese vase had once stood. His heart thumping, he picked up the phone. It was Celeste. Had he forgotten he was taking her to her friend's party? There was going to be dancing on a terrace above the river at Richmond. Only he'd said he'd phone her and he hadn't. Guy had forgotten. He knew he ought to go, it was the sort of thing he enjoyed, he'd accepted the friend's invitation and promised Celeste, but just the same he said he didn't feel like it. He'd got a bug, he thought, some virus, or a migraine coming. She took it resignedly, she didn't try to persuade him. After she had rung off, with the phone still in his hand, sick with disappointment, he thought he might as well take the opportunity and phone Georgiana Street. No reply. He made himself another drink and dialled Portland Road. He touched the red-lacquered wood--was it wood? No reply. Rachel might be already dead. Chuck would probably do it down in Brixton where Rachel worked. A lot of people said it wasn't safe for a woman, particularly a white woman, to walk about alone in the back streets of Brixton. Guy had never quite believed that but he thought he might start believing it now. A scenario took shape in his head. The police would want someone to identify Rachel's body. They'd call on Leonora or Maeve--Leonora most likely because she still lived in the same house as Rachel while Maeve did so no longer. Of course she'd ask William Newton to go with her, she'd be beside herself with grief and terror, but Newton wouldn't go because he was squeamish, he was the kind of person who couldn't face the idea of seeing a dead body, particularly a body in the state Rachel's would be in. So in despair she'd turn to the one she could depend on, her own true love, and together they'd go to Brixton. He'd drive her in the Jaguar. Once there, he'd take matters into his own hands. "I know the deceased quite as well as my fiancee does, Sergeant. Leave this matter of identification to me." She'd cling to him afterwards in the car. "It was always you really, Guy. I must have been mad..." After two more stiff vodkas he was perfectly sober but his speech was a bit slurred. He practiced talking to himself in the mirror and confessed honestly that he didn't really want Leonora to hear him speak like that. When he got back from the restaurant would do for a last try. He walked. He needed the air. It was very unusual for him to eat alone or in a place where he hadn't previously booked a table. A little way along the Old Brompton Road was an Italian restaurant where he had once had a good pasta with Celeste's predecessor, a half-Chinese girl who was a stewardess on a Boeing 747. Four days since he had spoken to Leonora... It was better, safer, to concentrate on Rachel, who might so easily be lying dead somewhere by now, almost certainly was. It was nearly eight o'clock, more than fortyeight hours since he'd tipped the wink to Danilo. The restaurant was somewhere in this row of shops. A man, a beggar, down and out, whatever you liked to call it, was lying full-length along one of the doorsteps, the threshold of a health-food store, long closed. He was black, a youngish man, tall apparently and thin to the point of emaciation, dressed in blackish rags. A cap lay on the pavement beside him and the single five-pee piece in it was the only indication that this was not simply headgear cast temporarily to the ground. He lay on his back with his hands folded behind his head, staring upwards. His lips were parted, the teeth very white with a gleam of gold among them. He didn't look at Guy and Guy gave him only a rapid glance but he was sure it was Linus. A Linus terribly changed, brought low, with a growth of beard on his once-glowing cheeks and an ugly jagged scar across his once shapely cheekbone, but the same man. Guy walked on, quite sober now but trembling. His hands shook, he felt as if his legs could scarcely carry him, but for all that he kept walking. He forgot about finding the Italian restaurant and walked unsteadily down the Boltons, along the Fulham Road. All that mattered was to put as great a distance as possible between him and the poor derelict on that doorstep who might have been, who was, Linus. Yet once he was in the restaurant he found in Cale Street, had gone to the bar and ordered a large vodka martini before asking for a table, he wondered almost with a groan why he had run away. Why hadn't he stopped and asked how he could help his friend? That, of course, was to simplify things. But he might have made a start by asking the man if he really was Linus. The precise identity of a black person is no more readily discernible to a white man than a white is to a black. There will not be that instant indisputable recognition. In Guy's mind a slight doubt lingered. When he last saw Linus he was a lithe, fit, beautiful, prosperous, young gangster. He was always well and gaudily dressed. He had a gold tooth, Guy remembered, rather unusual in the young but not so unusual in someone of Caribbean origin. Guy sat down at his table, ordered some sort of chicken dish and another vodka martini while he waited for the food. The beggar on the step had a gold tooth. Going back in his mind to half an hour before, he saw again the parted lips, full and gleaming, with a bluish tinge, and among the white molars a glint of gold. It was Linus. What had happened to him that he had come to this? Fifteen years ago... The teenage street gangs knew nothing of racism. It was something to be proud of now, something to be pleased about, but in those days none of them thought about it from that aspect, only marvelled when the police and social workers talked about race troubles among the young in Netting Hill. Guy could almost have said--almost but not quite, if he was honest--that he didn't notice another person's colour. He was aware that in some people's eyes to be Irish, as he was, was a liability. Linus had been a young devil. Once, in the Central Line tube between getting in at Notting Hill and getting out at Queensway, he had taken five hundred pounds off three American tourists without their knowing a thing about it. The food came but he could only pick at it. He drank a carafe of the house wine. Why had he stayed to eat anything? He should have returned immediately to the place in the Old Brompton Road where he had seen Linus lying. He had run away. Getting up now, paying the bill, he told himself he must go back. He must go back and find the young black man on the step and confirm that he was Linus. He walked down the street looking for a taxi, looking for that glowing golden cube moving towards one that is the most welcome of all street lights. Approaching him along the King's Road, arm-in-arm like an old married couple, were Robin Chisholm and Maeve Kirkland. Of course it was less surprising that they should be here than that he was. They lived only a street away. The King's Road was their High Street. Guy expected them either to pretend not to see him as on that day in the park or to start a row in the street. He braced himself and stared as they approached. They were going in for that twin-dressing again, perhaps it was a feature of their relationship. Identical pink shirts this time. It was the jeans that differed, hers the brushed sooty kind, his stone-washed blue denim. Robin showed no signs of having narrowly escaped a serious accident, and his eye was no longer discoloured. Guy had to stop himself from putting his hand up to his cheek, where the faint mark of a fingernail still was. They were both grinning widely. "Bygones be bygones, old man?" said Robin. Guy had never heard anyone under sixty call another "old man" before. "How are you?" he said, and then, for politeness, "Good to see you up and about again." "Oh, I'm fighting fit." It seemed an unfortunate choice of words. Knowing Robin, Guy had no doubt it was a matter of choice. "What brings you," said Robin in his fruity tones, "to this neck of the woods?" Without waiting for an answer, he asked Guy round to St. Leonard's Terrace for a drink. All this warmth staggered Guy. What was Robin up to? "Sorry, I'd like to, but I'm in a bit of a hurry." "You haven't asked where Leonora is," Maeve said rather spitefully. It was true. He realized he hadn't thought of Leonora for the past hour. It must be a record. "No," he said. "No. She's at Portland Road, I suppose. I'm having lunch with her tomorrow." "She's moved out to William's on account of Rachel not being there. There's no point in her staying in the flat alone." He felt a thrill of excitement. "What do you mean, Rachel not being there?" "She's gone away on holiday, hasn't she?" "On holiday?" he said. "This morning. She went to Spain with Dominic. Why are you looking like that, Guy? It's Rachel I'm talking about, not Leonora." A taxi came. He hailed it, told the driver to drop him in Bolton Gardens, said goodbye to them and got in. As it drove off he could see Maeve's face through the rear window, her mouth a little open, her head shaking. So Rachel had escaped him, or rather, had escaped Chuck. Rachel had gone off on holiday with one of those egghead men of hers. The important thing, of course, was not that she should be dead but that she shouldn't be there. Well, she wouldn't be there. The evening had grown windy and no longer warm. Autumn was coming. The concrete of a doorstep was cold and hard, piercing through thin soot-coloured clothes like pain. He got out of the taxi in Bolton Gardens and walked the few yards back into the Old Brompton Road. There was no one in the doorway. Linus, if it was Linus, had gone. The only evidence of his past occupancy was a cigarette end, a tiny stub, much smaller than that left behind by most tobacco smokers. Guy picked it up and smelt the slightly dizzying scent of marijuana.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She was late. He sat at their large round corner table in the gracious room, determined not to look at his watch again. His drink had been ordered and he resolved not to look at his watch until it came. The cigarette he had not been able to resist lighting was attracting censorious glances from a woman in a pink hat. Guy forced himself to look out of the window. The brandy he had ordered arrived. It was the strongest thing he could think of, short of something totally way-out like absinth or Zubrowka. Even the Savoy probably didn't have those. He looked at his watch. It was twelve minutes past one. He hadn't spoken to her on the phone for days. This date at the Savoy had never been confirmed. He thought, she's not coming. They've beaten me, they've moved her away to Newton's place, they're never going to let her speak to me again. I'll wait till twenty past. If she hasn't come by twenty past--what will I do then? What shall I do? Go to Georgiana Street, he thought. Find her. He hadn't spoken to her since he saw her in Lamb's Conduit Street on Tuesday. It was four days. He ought to have persisted, he ought to have found her before this. She might be anywhere, she might have gone with Rachel to Spain. He caught the waiter's eye and asked for another brandy. Of course she wasn't coming, he knew she wouldn't come now. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-two minutes past. The second brandy was nearly gone by the time the waiter showed her to the table. Guy jumped up. He forgot the agonies of his long wait. She looked beautiful. For him and for this special place she had for once dressed up. But perhaps not for once. Perhaps forever. It was part of the changing process, the change back to him. He forgot the unanswered phone, the silent days. She wore a linen suit. The short skirt was of a rich dark but not navy blue, the long, high-buttoned, tight-waisted flared jacket was dark blue and dark pink in wide vertical stripes. The sleeves were turned back to show the pink-and-blue-spotted lining. She had mauvish stockings and blue suede shoes and her earrings were dark red glass roses. Her hair shone. It looked as if it had just been cut, and well-cut for a change. There was a glow on her face so that for a moment he thought she was made-up. She kissed him, one cheek, then the other, nothing unusual in that. "I'm sorry I'm so late, Guy. There was trouble on the tube." Who cared about the tube? Her eccentric modes of travel made him laugh. "Darling Leonora," he said, "you look so beautiful. I want you to look like that always." "It was my mother. She said, 'You can't go to the Savoy in jeans.' I'd just bought this suit, so I thought, well, why not?" "Your mother wanted you to dress up for lunch with me?" She smiled, the tight smile with the corners of her mouth restrained. "My mother would want me to dress up for lunch with anyone." That was best ignored. "Have something nice to drink for a change," he said. "Don't spoil things with orange juice." "All right. I'll have a sherry. No, not a dry one, a lovely dark brown, sticky Bristol Cream." "So you've moved into Georgiana Street," he said. She began explaining why. He told her about meeting Maeve and Robin. The apparent truce or detente between him and Robin seemed to bring her great pleasure. She reached across and squeezed Guy's hand. No, she wouldn't eat meat even to please him, she said. She'd have fish. Lobster? Guy suggested. That made her shudder but she would have sole. Creole prawns first and then sole and fried potatoes--why not?--and vegetables instead of a salad. A proper meal, Guy said, he was delighted. Although he had never contemplated doing so, he told her about Linus. She did remember Linus? "Of course I do. He didn't like me. I'll never forget it, the first time we met, it was out in the street, Talbot Road or somewhere, and you were nice to me, you passed me a joint--though, God knows, Guy, you shouldn't have--and Linus, he spat into the drain." She remembered all that. She remembered how he had been that first time. His heart was full. "There was the end of a joint left behind on the step," he said. "He never liked me," she said again. "There was no reason. He was just one of those gay men who don't like women." "Linus wasn't gay." He was astounded sometimes by the things she thought of, the layers of her, the things that went on in her pretty head. "What makes you say that? He had that girl-friend, Sophette, she was old enough to be his mother, but she was his girl-friend." "Exactly," said Leonora with a little laugh. "Are you sure it was him on the doorstep?" "Almost positive." "You'd better be entirely positive before you start doing something." She ate her prawns with gusto, she ate all her fish and most of the potatoes. She wouldn't have a second sherry but she shared the Frascati with him. He had to order a second bottle. "Guy," she said, very serious, "it's very good of you, very kind, to want to help Linus if that's really him and he's down and out, but I think you've got to remember something. Linus was a pusher, he was a dealer in dangerous drugs. That's how he made his living. He's probably come to this state through his own addiction. Had you thought of that?" He had to stop himself from gaping at her. Didn't she know? Didn't she know that what went for Linus also went for him? "It would be a bit strong," she said, "to say he only got what he deserved, but you could say he brought it on himself." "So he's to be left in the gutter? Who gives you these ideas? Newton?" "You're identifying yourself with Linus, that's why you feel so deeply about him. You see yourself in him, brought low by some means or other. Oh, not poverty or crime now, I don't mean that, but something else. You were in the same line of life, you see, you're the same age with much the same background, the same way of making a living once." "You've caught that way of talking from Rachel." She didn't answer. "What do you know of my way of making a living, Leonora?" he said heavily. She said innocently, "You sold marijuana, didn't you? I always knew that." The moment passed, the terror. She drank a second glass of wine, would have no more, but was excitedly prepared to have a wonderful sweet, a kind of sculpture in chocolate with leaf-thin whorls and petals, white, milk, and dark. The decision about the sweet, its arrival shifted them from the subject. He began to think about the two weeks ahead, the wedding that everyone said would take place on September 16, a fortnight from today. Of course it wouldn't but... "I couldn't get you on the phone at all last week," he said. "No, I know. I am sorry, Guy. But I'll be in Georgiana Street all the time now." She smiled at him, her head a little on one side. "I do have to go out sometimes, you know." "You've left the flat in Portland Road for good?" "It looks like it. With Maeve gone and Rachel away, there didn't seem much point in going back there. As a matter of fact, we're lending it to Janice and Gerry while they're in this country. It's nicer for them to have a place of their own than stay with Daddy and Susannah. Then, when Rachel comes back, we'll exchange contracts and it'll be all hers." When they had finished they walked down onto the Embankment. He took her hand and she let him hold it. The words were in his head and he wanted to bring them out but he was afraid. They were there, in his mouth now, waiting to be uttered. She talked about the river, the craft on it. There had been an accident to a pleasure boat the week before, the worst river disaster for more than a hundred years, fifty people drowned. She was talking about what it would be like, trapped below deck, shuddering. He said because he had to, because the words crowded into his mouth were choking him, they exploded from him, "Con Mulvanney--the name--what does it mean to you?" Innocent eyes, an uncomprehending gentle gaze. "Nothing. I don't know. What is it, Guy?" "A man who took LSD and died of bee-stings." "Ah." He saw light dawn and his heart dipped. "Yes, I heard about that. A long time ago. I never knew if it was true." "It was true." "What am I supposed to say? Do you want to tell me about it?" "He begged me for the stuff. I didn't want to give it to him. But I was devastated afterwards. Leo darling, I was so ashamed. And I didn't want you ever to know, I knew what it would do to you. To you and me. How you'd feel about me." "I knew there must be a reason why you did it," she said. "It didn't make any difference." "It didn't make any difference?" "To the way I felt about you," she said. He took her in his arms. She was leaning against a round smooth stone pillar and he put his arms round her and kissed her. There had been no kisses of that kind between them for years, five years, six. It was a long and sweet, open-lipped kiss with tongues meeting, of the kind that precedes lovemaking, not a kiss for a river-breezy corner with people passing and a ship on the water sounding a long blast on its siren. "I love you, Leonora," he said. "I've always loved you. I shall love you till I die. Come back to me. I know you'll come back to me one day. Come back to me now." She said with infinite sadness, "It's too late, Guy." "Why is it too late? It's never too late. I love you and you love me, and you know you'll never go through with that crazy marriage, that ridiculous marriage. Don't you see it would be a crime against you and me to marry that man? I know you won't, though. I know you love me. You've shown me. I know you love me now." "Let's walk, Guy," she said. They walked along the path in the Victoria Embankment Gardens. It was cool and windy and there were little grey waves on the river. "Promise me," she said, "not to press me about this. It's hard enough for me without that. Things are hard enough." "My darling, I won't do anything you don't want me to do. I'll do anything you ask. You've made me so happy." "You do nag rather, you know, Guy. You do go on and on. But you won't any more, will you? You won't pin me down?" "Now I know you love me, I'm so happy I won't say another word." "Come and have supper with us on Wednesday," she said. "Would you do that? Phone me tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday and come and have supper with us on Wednesday at about seven-thirty." What's supper? he might have said if it had been anyone else. Dinner is what you eat in the evening. Tea, of course, was what he had eaten in the old days with his mother, if there had been anything to eat. "Who's 'us'?" he said. "William will be there, of course. Guy, it's William's flat. Be reasonable. Be nice." "I'll be nice. I'll come. I'll get to see you twice in one week. Where shall we have lunch next Saturday?" She laughed. "We can talk about that on Wednesday." After she had parted from him he didn't take a taxi. He walked. She had kissed him again when they said goodbye, a warm, sweet, loving kiss. And now he was alone again. She had told him she loved him, that nothing made any difference to that, she had renewed her love for him. Of course she had also said it was too late to come back to him, but she didn't mean that. Probably she thought he wouldn't really want her after her inconstancy, but she was wrong there, she was quite wrong. It occurred to him as he walked along the Embankment that when people in their circumstances come together again after a split, when they start again, it would be usual for them to go home together. The natural thing would have been for Leonora to go home with him now. But he understood why she couldn't do that. Hadn't she said things were hard for her? "Things are hard enough without that," she had said. Nothing could have declared more plainly the pressure she was under from her family to stay with William Newton. They had found him for her, brought them together, and now they were all united in binding her to him. All they wanted, and this was very clear, was to get September 16 over and that wedding with it. They were like some royal family in history or a fairy story who locked the princess up in a tower until she consented to marry the--ginger dwarf. He smiled to himself when he thought of it like that. But he was soon angry again, angry for her, whom they had made unhappy, his sweet and beautiful love who found "things hard enough" because she was being forced into marriage with a man she didn't love. It began to rain and he hailed a taxi. Once back in Scarsdale Mews he thought he would check up at once in his engagement book to see what he was doing on Wednesday that he would have to cancel. Nothing--on Wednesday. For a moment he could hardly believe what he read, then believed it only too well. He remembered it. On Monday, her birthday, he was supposed to be driving Celeste to Stratford-on-Avon, taking her to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and afterwards staying the night at the Lygon Arms in Broadway. Supposed to be? He had the tickets, had made the booking. She had taken his letting her down last Friday very well. He couldn't do that to her again. As he reassessed the next few days he started planning his phone calls to Leonora. On Monday he ought to be able to reach Leonora before he left, and on Tuesday he could phone her from the hotel... Celeste spent Sunday night with him. She arrived in the late afternoon just as he rang off from talking to Leonora. It was necessarily a bland and on the whole meaningless telephone conversation they had, due to Tessa and Magnus being there. Leonora was back in Portland Road for the day, packing up some of her personal possessions, she said, for her mother and stepfather to take home with them in their car and store in their garage. This made Guy reflect to his satisfaction that if she really intended marrying Newton, she would have her things taken round to his flat. "Darling," he said, "I would have brought it all here. Why didn't you ask me?" He understood she had to speak in a very neutral way, make small talk really, with Tessa there. With Tessa, doubtless, breathing down her neck, noting every word to rebuke her with it later. He could see Tessa, that stick-insect woman darting about the flat, picking up this and that, choosing to take things off a shelf just behind Leonora while she was on the phone. He could see her stringy brown hands, a skeleton's bone hands with a bit of dried leather covering them and the nails painted like silver knife blades, her small head with the dark hair scraped back on a neck like a tortoise's questing out of its shell. "I have to go away on business, Leo," he said. "Just tomorrow and Tuesday." It was untrue, but now was no time for admitting he was taking another woman away for the night. Telling a lie about it would only be bad, Guy thought obscurely, if he had wanted to go off with Celeste. "But I'll still phone you; I'll make sure I get to a phone." It wasn't until very early next morning that, waking up in the Chinese bed beside Celeste, he began to recall what Leonora had said to him about Con Mulvanney. Her kiss, her declaration of her continuing love for him, her disclosures, so revealing, about the pressures she was under--all this had driven those simple remarks of hers from his mind. He hadn't even remembered them when he talked to her on the phone yesterday afternoon. But they were back with him now, in the dark mad small hours. He could see the luminous hands of his small carriage clock showing four-thirty. "I heard about that," she had said. "A long time ago. I never knew if it was true." She had heard about that. He had never really doubted, he had never needed proof, but now his belief had been confirmed. Why hadn't he asked her who told her? Because he was so overwhelmed with joy by what she said next that none of it made any difference. Anyway, he knew. Rachel had told her, Rachel who had gone away on holiday to Spain with a man called Dominic. And what a difference that had made! Rachel was scarcely removed from the sphere of influence she had set up, for Leonora to be back in his arms. He was painfully aware just the same of her not being in his arms at that moment. Only a fool wouldn't have asked why she couldn't just walk out on Newton, get in a taxi and come here to him. But he knew why she wouldn't. Her family's pressures and threats were still too much for her, she had to be liberated from that and liberated by him. If there was any possibility of her arrival, Celeste wouldn't be here now, her sable dark hair spread over the pillow, her brown shoulders emerging from the white ruffled tulle of her nightgown. There had been no occasion for the removal of that pretty garment last night or on any night for a while now. The odd thought came to him that she would never take it off for him again. When he thought sleep gone until the next night, in some Cots wold bed, sleep came to him and held him until past eight. Celeste was up before him, making the phoning of Leonora difficult in theory, impossible in practice. They were away by ten. At the place where they had lunch he couldn't tell Celeste he had to make a phone call on business. She knew too much, she wouldn't believe him. It was her birthday, she was enjoying herself. He had just bought her a magnificent lunch, promised her a present, anything she wanted from the nicest dress shop in Stratford. She looked wonderful with her beautiful hair plaited and coiled on top of her head, in a cream silk trouser suit and caramel shirt. Men turned their heads, looked at her, then at him. He couldn't go and make a phone call to Leonora now and tell Celeste a lie about it--still less, tell her the truth about it. It was Romeo and Juliet they saw. Guy had seldom, if ever before, seen a Shakespeare play on the stage. Maybe on the TV by accident, but not on the real stage. "You thought it would be boring, didn't you?" said Celeste as they got into the Jaguar. "But I could see you loved it. You're like a kid that's only done Shakespeare at school and can't believe it's the same thing when he sees it done for real." "I don't remember Shakespeare at school," said Guy. "Sweet Guy, they did it on the days you were shuckin' 'n' jivin' round Notting Dale." "Maybe," he said. "Do you know what that play reminded me of?" She didn't answer. He could feel her silence, warm and distressed. Then she said, "Yes," with great finality. It was their own story, his and Leonora's, the star-crossed lovers, the repressive autocratic family. He hadn't killed anyone, of course, but in their eyes he had: Con Mulvanney. Con Mulvanney was his--what was he called?--Tybalt. The play stayed with him as he drove south, reproducing glowing pictures in his mind. That bit in the orchard and on the balcony, he could so easily replace in it Romeo with himself and Juliet with Leonora. He wished he could remember some of the lines, he wished he could talk about it with Celeste. Something about the way she was sitting, her shoulders stiff, her profile bronze-hard and staring ahead of her in the dark, told him he couldn't. By the time they were in their hotel bedroom it was midnight. The day had gone by and he hadn't phoned Leonora. He had longed and longed to phone, even during the intervals of the play he had thought about phoning her, about escaping from Celeste and finding a phone, but it had been impossible. It wasn't the first time a day had passed without their speaking on the phone. Far from it. In the previous week, though he had seen her at Susannah's, he had spoken to her only once. But it was the first time they hadn't spoken because he had failed to call. Celeste didn't maintain her silence. She was speaking again, talking about the room, the view they would have in the morning. But the confidence that had existed between them, the wonderful way that, though he didn't love her, he had been able to say anything and everything to her, they had been able to share each other's minds, that had gone. It was lost, he had killed it, it would never come again. What did it matter? He thought, as he lay in the twin bed a yard away from Celeste's, that he would be bound anyway to lose her once he and Leonora were together again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"You didn't phone me yesterday." "Darling, I'm so sorry. Were you worried? I haven't upset you, have I?" Guy was so happy that she minded his not phoning her that he couldn't keep the note of excited joy out of his voice. "I couldn't get to a phone. It just wasn't possible. Will you forgive me?" "Oh, it doesn't matter, it's not that. I only meant it was odd, it was so unlike you." She must have waited in for his call. His heart sang. His head felt tumultuous, as if someone inside it were doing an energetic dance. "You stayed in, waiting for the phone to ring? Oh, Leo." "I happened to stay in. I'd nothing to go out for." Ah, yes. A likely story. He almost laughed aloud. "Leo, will you tell me something? It's about what we talked about on Saturday. I don't know why I didn't ask you then. You said you knew all about--well, Con Mulvanney. Do you remember?" "Who?" "The man who died of bee-stings. You said you knew all about him, you'd heard about that and it was a long time ago. It was exactly four years ago, as a matter of fact." "Yes," she said, "it would be about that. I was still living with Daddy and Susannah. It was before I moved into that room in Fulham with Rachel." "Leo, who told you about it? It was Rachel told you, wasn't it?" "Rachel?" It was so clear in his mind, he began to tell her the story as he understood it. "Con Mulvanney lived in South London, in Balham, and so did this woman who was with him when he died. She was some sort of social worker and Rachel's a social worker in South London, so you can see how she came to tell her. She said she'd tell everyone..." "Guy," she interrupted him, "what are you talking about? Do you know what you're talking about? Because I don't. It was Susannah who told me, Susannah." The name exploded in his ears. Susannah, whom he had thought of as his friend, the woman who, of all Leonora's family and friends, had been kindest to him--it was she who had betrayed him and alienated his love. He should have thought of it before. Why had he been such a fool? "Of course." He heard himself stammering. "Susannah's mother lived in Earlsfield, which is east Wandsworth, which is next to Balham, she was in hospital there." "Guy, I honestly don't know what you mean. It wasn't like that, Susannah's mother never came into it. I suppose I'd better tell you, though I promised myself I never would." "Tell me what?" He touched the wooden frame of the French windows and held on. "A woman wrote to Susannah--well, she wrote to Susannah and my father, I mean to Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Chisholm. I was there when the letter came. I suppose she thought they were my parents, I mean that Susannah was my mother. She wrote warning them off you, for my sake, I mean. Look, Guy, what is this? What does it matter? I've told you it didn't make any difference. I have to go, we've been talking for half an hour." "Please don't go, Leo, please don't ring off. This is terribly important to me, I have to know. Who wrote to your parents?" "To Daddy and Susannah," she said. He could hear a growing impatience in her voice. "Well, I'll tell you quickly and then I must go. I've told you it made no difference to the way I felt about you and you must believe that. This woman's name was Vasari, I've always remembered because it's the same as the man who wrote about the lives of the artists." He didn't know what she meant, he was lost. "Vasari," she said, "Polly or something. She wrote to them to tell them they shouldn't let me marry you. My God, I was twenty-two years old. They were to stop me marrying you because you were a social menace and you'd given drugs to her boy-friend. It was something like that. Susannah opened the letter because it was addressed to both of them and Daddy had gone to work." "And she told you just like that?" "I was there when she opened the letter. Of course she showed it to me. Look, phone me later if you want to, but I do have to go now, this minute." He said he would phone her at seven. She said goodbye quickly and put the phone down. He sighed. Clarifying the mysteries of the past and the present only led to further complications. Of course it was easy to see how Poppy Vasari had found out about his association with Leonora and found out, too, who Leonora was. In those days they were often together, he was always calling at Lamb's Conduit Street. She would have followed him, read the name by the bell-push on the door. How that vindictive woman must have enjoyed writing the letter that would ruin his life! And Susannah, that treacherous woman, that snake in the grass... Surely a nice person with any idea of loyalty would have thrown that letter away in disgust after reading the first line. The sort of woman he had thought Susannah was wouldn't have believed a word of it, the last thing she would have done was show it, and show it immediately, to the girl it was intended to caution. The hypocrisy of it made him indignant. It wouldn't have been so bad coming from Tessa, who had never pretended to like him, who had never concealed her hatred. He remembered Susannah's kindly proffered advice, her Judas kisses. He phoned Leonora again at seven. It was Newton he expected to hear and he braced himself for the man's exasperated, superior-sounding voice--after all, he was going to have to spend tomorrow evening with him--but Leonora answered the phone. "Can he hear what you're saying?" he asked her. "If you mean William, he's not here. He's been in Manchester all day and he's not back." "Will he be back by tomorrow evening?" "Yes, of course. He'll be back tonight, any minute now, I should think." "Leonora, tell me about the letter Poppy Vasari wrote to Susannah." "Oh dear, I wish you'd forget it. I wish I'd never told you. You're making far too much of it. Poppy--is that her name?--Vasari wrote to Daddy and Susannah and told them you made your living by selling dangerous drugs. I think she called them Class-A drugs. She said you'd given a hallucinogenic tablet--those were the words she used--to this Mulvanney man and he'd gone crazy and stuck his head in a beehive. Well, that part had been in the papers. There was a photocopy in with the letter of an account of the inquest from a newspaper. Susannah showed it to me--well, I was sort of reading it over her shoulder. She said she didn't think she'd even tell Daddy. She was quite upset." "What did you say to her?" \ "As a matter of fact, I said I thought it was probably libel putting things like that in a letter." "Did she tell your father?" "I don't know. I didn't ask and he never said. She told Magnus." "She did what?" "Guy, please don't get in a state. She told Magnus because he's a solicitor. She rang him up at his office and asked him what one ought to do about letters like that. She meant should she tell the police, I think." "Oh, Christ," said Guy. "Christ." "Anyway, you needn't worry because he said the best thing to do with it was burn it. I suppose he thought it was a poison-pen letter, though it was in fact signed." "No doubt old Skull-face told your mother." "Possibly. Well, yes, I expect he did. My mother and I never discussed it. I wish you wouldn't call Magnus that. Susannah and I talked about it quite a bit. She's very understanding, you know. I told her we all smoked grass in those days and she said she had too, and I said I expect you had dealt in drugs when you were younger. It was the background you came from and the people you associated with--you didn't mind my saying that, did you, Guy?" "I don't mind anything you say," he said. "All Susannah said was that it might have mattered if I was seriously thinking of marrying you but I wasn't." "She said that?" "There isn't any point in going over and over it. It made no difference to the way I felt. Guy, you know how I feel, I've told you often enough. Listen, I can hear William coming in. We'll see you tomorrow night, right?" "I'll phone you first thing in the morning." "No, don't do that. I shan't be here. I'll see you about seven-thirty tomorrow." He was going out to dinner with Bob Joseph and a man who was chairman of a Spanish hotel chain. They were meeting at a restaurant in Chelsea not far from the one where he had dined on the evening he had seen the street person who might have been Linus. Guy walked down to the Old Brompton Road. What had Leonora meant, she wouldn't be there "first thing in the morning"? She was there now. Where could she possibly be going? Then he realized. Tomorrow would be September 6 and very likely the first day of her school term. The children would be returning to school tomorrow. She would be going to work. But, wait a minute. That was a bit odd, going back to school as a teacher when you intended to get married less than two weeks later and take a fortnight off. Teachers never did that. Teachers were expected to get married and go on honeymoons in the long school holidays. But of course, it meant only one thing: she wasn't getting married, she had never really intended to get married. It was all a fantasy. Was it perhaps designed to make him jealous? If so, it had certainly succeeded. He smiled to himself. Women, he thought, were like that. He turned out of the Earl's Court Road and began looking for Linus. In a doorway, though not the doorway of the health-food shop, a man lay asleep, curled up in the foetal position, his face and head covered by a newspaper. Guy thought it was the same man but he couldn't be sure. Nor could he bring himself to wake the man. The realization he had come to about Leonora and her fake or dream wedding made him feel so happy and buoyant that his interest in Linus was temporarily weakened. There was nothing anyway that he could do about it. To lift up the newspaper and look at the sleeping man's face seemed to him an outrageous act, a piece of insensitive impertinence. This evidently was Linus's beat. He would find him again. A taxi came and he got into it. He thought of Susannah with hatred, picturing her in that flat in her smart black trousers and top. She was leaning ever the banisters and smiling. He followed this welcoming presence into the living room. The white card with the silver border was on the mantelpiece. It was probably an invitation to someone else's wedding. Yes, that would be it. It was an invitation to another couple's wedding, the ceremony had already taken place, and because the card was now therefore useless, Janice had picked it up and thrown it out as she went to make tea. This explanation satisfied him completely.

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Flowers, chocolates, wine--or a real present? He had never seen her eat chocolates. She was a health foodie. Flowers had to be put in water, which would mean her going away and leaving him with Newton. A real present could only be jewellery for her, earrings, for instance, and he sensed this would somehow be out of place, over the top, ostentatious. After all, unimportant as William Newton might be, a mere stooge or puppet set up by Anthony and Susannah, it was his home, he still no doubt thought of Leonora as engaged to him, even as due to marry him on Saturday week. Guy didn't think he could give Leonora a pair of earrings worth, say, three hundred pounds, in Newton's presence. He settled for champagne. A single bottle of Piper Heidsieck. Should he wear a suit? He couldn't imagine Newton even possessing a suit. Maybe designer jeans and a sweater would be best. It wasn't going to be warm. Guy realized he was as nervous and uneasy about the evening ahead as if he had never dined out in his life. Would there be other people there? If only he could phone her. There was an idea in his mind of finally winning her away from Newton on this evening, carrying her off under his nose, a happy victim of kidnap, bringing her home here forever. A night's sleep had cooled his anger. He no longer felt he hated Susannah. He blamed her, he never wanted to see her again, if he had met her in the street he would have passed her by with head averted, but his hatred had gone. After all, she had failed. In spite of her vindictive motives, she hadn't succeeded in turning Leonora against him. Leonora herself said it had made no difference. Susannah had interfered inexcusably in his life, but her interference no longer mattered, had never mattered, it was simply of no account. Yet his discovery altered the situation. Rachel, designated Chuck's victim, was very obviously not guilty. Rachel had never spoken to or even heard of Poppy Vasari, Rachel had never been told about his activities as a dealer, so Rachel did not merit death. But Guy, not usually cowardly, balked at saying so to Danilo. Having changed his mind about Robin Chisholm and been roughly handled by Danilo on account of it, he hesitated to ring Danilo up and say he had been wrong about Rachel too. It wasn't as if he could even say, "Forget Rachel Lingard, Susannah Chisholm is the one." Susannah wasn't the one, he didn't want Susannah killed, he just never wanted to speak to her again. Dressing for the dinner party ahead, deciding finally--the sun having come out--on a pair of white linen trousers and a black silk shirt with white-and-cream-patterned V-necked silk pullover, Guy came to the conclusion that there was no need, at least at present, to tell Danilo anything. Rachel, after all, was out of the country, safe in some Spanish resort. Chuck probably knew this, or knew she had gone away, and would do nothing until she returned on September 15. Just before he left, he poured himself a stiff brandy, then another. He needed it and there might not be much on offer in Georgiana Street. The taxi waited while he went into the wine shop and bought the champagne. He was going to be early. He got the driver to set him down in Mornington Crescent and began to walk the rest of the way, cradling the heavy bottle that was wrapped up in mauve tissue paper. It was still only twenty past seven when he got there. The houses here had scrubby front gardens, tiny plots of brown grass and dusty bushes. Steps went up to the front door and there was a deep basement. In the front garden of the house where Newton lived was planted a pole with an estate agent's board attached to it on which was printed: ONE-BEDROOM LUXURY FLAT and SOLD, SUBJECT TO CONTRACT. There were five flats, one on each floor. Guy, before he even rang Newton's bell, had a very good idea what the "luxury," as described by the estate agent, would amount to. A bathroom that actually had tiles on the walls, and some sort of central heating. He didn't much like to think of Leonora living in this place, a back street that looked as if it would be unsafe at night, a grey brick house whose paintwork needed renewing. Newton's voice, coming out of the grid, instead of asking who it was, said, "Come up," and the lock on the door buzzed. A steep staircase and two long flights to climb. Another one of those dreary walk-ups. Newton was on the landing, outside an open front door, waiting for him. He said, "Hi," and held out his hand. After a moment's hesitation, Guy shook hands with him. He was glad he hadn't put a suit on. Newton wore jeans and a grey jumper with a hole in one of the elbows. His longish ginger hair stuck up like a punk's, only it grew that way, the effect hadn't been achieved with styling gel. Leonora was in the living room, looking awkward, Guy thought, or embarrassed perhaps. As well she might in this barn of a room with a surprisingly low ceiling and two small sash windows giving onto the grey fagade opposite. He had got over all his heart-turnings on the way upstairs and advanced towards her with no more diffidence than if she had been Celeste. She kissed him, a light peck. Of course she would, with Newton watching. He handed the champagne to Newton, who said, "How grand. What are we celebrating?" That made Guy smile. The little red-haired man was really very unsophisticated. Guy felt powerful, in control. He said kindly, "Quite a lot of people drink champagne as an aperitif these days, you know. There doesn't have to be anything to celebrate." "Oh, I see. Then it would be appropriate to drink it now?" "Don't be absurd, William," said Leonora, looking uncomfortable, though Guy couldn't see what was absurd about what he'd said. He was taking a good look round the room. The furniture was the kind of thing rejected by comfortably off middle-aged achievers and passed on to poor young relatives. He assessed the carpet as coming from one of those sales held after a store fire. You could even see the burnt patch in one corner. Up on the wall, above a Victorian fireplace of cast iron and floral tiles, a fireplace that was there not because Newton had found it in an antique shop but because it had been put in with the rest of the dilapidated fittings in 1895, hung the swords. They were crossed at the point Guy remembered was called the forte. One was bare, the other in a rather worn and shabby embroidered scabbard. They recalled to Guy that dream he had had in which he was fighting Con Mulvanney with swords in Kensington Gardens and had stabbed him through the heart. He remembered Newton had said he wanted to sell the swords. He had also, on that occasion after the cinema, said something about selling his flat. "Is that this flat that's been sold?" he had begun to ask when Leonora came back with three glasses (one champagne flute, one hock glass, and something that looked as if designed to hold half a grapefruit) on a tray. Guy nearly offered to open the champagne, but stopped himself because he wanted to see Newton make a mess of it and in Leonora's presence. She was looking worried and far from her best. Gone was the elegant fashionable young woman in the dark-blue-andpink linen suit, the pretty stockings and shoes. Being with Newton simply didn't suit her. That was an inescapable conclusion, anyone would see it. Those white pants would only look good if freshly laundered each time they were worn, and as for that faded sweat-shirt... Her hair was hauled onto the back of her head with one of those awful crocodile clips. The red glass roses hanging from her ears looked ridiculous with the rest of the get-up. Newton opened the champagne without mishap. It must have been one of the easy bottles, Guy thought, you sometimes got them. They began to talk about the sale of Newton's flat and Guy asked him where he was going to live. He asked where he was going to live but Newton said, "I expect we shall buy a house." Guy ignored that "we." "You don't want to leave it too long. Remember, property's the best investment. Even in a recession in the property market it's a great mistake to sell your home and invest the proceeds in something else." "I'll remember that, Guy," said Newton. Guy was quite well-informed about the property market and he talked some more about it. He said something about his own plans for moving, perhaps of buying a house at the "best end" of Ladbroke Grove. What did Leonora think of Stanley Crescent, the abode, he had heard, of TV personalities and one world-famous singer, a million-pound Italianate villa in fashionable Stanley Crescent? William said he hardly supposed what Leonora thought would make any difference to whether Guy bought or not. He said it coldly and Guy wondered if the two of them had been quarrelling before he arrived. Leonora went off to do the final dinner preparations and Guy changed the subject. He intended to be tactful, to behave well while he could. "Very autumnal this evening," he said, looking towards the window. "The nights will soon be drawing in," said Newton. Guy looked narrowly at him to see if he was mocking him, but it was all right. Newton's expression was both serious and pleasant. He began to talk about the summer that was past, the sunniest of the century. It wasn't much of a meal. If people couldn't or wouldn't cook properly, Guy thought, it was better to buy smoked salmon and a cold roast chicken for guests than attempt strange meat loaves. He was even more dubious when Leonora told him there was no meat in the loaf, it was all soya and herbs. The only good thing was the wine, a surprisingly good claret, of which Newton actually produced two bottles. Guy complimented him on the wine. Drink, as it always did, made him feel a lot better. Just the same, he knew it would be impossible for him to pass a passive evening here and to go home alone. The brandy, the wine had wonderfully clarified his mind. He saw that this was the crunch, the time had come. But it wasn't this decision of his that was responsible for the change in atmosphere, the rapidly ensuing trouble. It was the question he asked Leonora, in all innocence, about her first day back at school.

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"It's a shame you've had to cook. We could have gone out to eat." This remark was partly prompted by the dessert she served, a home-made sorbet, the colour and texture of three-day old snow but with large ice crystals in it like splinters of glass. The sorbet was as tasteless as snow too, though Guy guessed it was supposed to be lemon. "Why is it a shame, Guy? Because the food's so awful? I'm sorry, I know I'm not much of a cook. But William's worse except with curry. His curry's marvellous, only we didn't know if you liked it." The idea of a man possibly being expected to cook for guests rather shocked him. But he didn't say so. He hastened to assure his Leonora--that she should apologize to him!--that he only meant she must have had a hard day at school, today being the first day of the new term. She reddened. It was years since he had seen her blush like that. Newton didn't seem to notice. He was busy with the mousetrap cheese, which was all that was on offer. But he looked up and said, with his mouth full, "She hasn't been in today. She's given up--remember?" Remember? What did the man mean? "Leo, have you left your job? You didn't tell me." "I resigned," she said, "as soon as I knew... I mean, I resigned in June." "What were you going to say?" he said. "As soon as you knew what?" Newton picked up the wine bottle. He looked at Leonora, who shook her head, filled Guy's glass and then his own. He took a long slow drink, said, "As soon as she knew I was going to work for BBC North-West." Guy looked at her. "I don't understand." "There's no particular reason why you should need to." Newton could be quite simple and innocent-sounding and, suddenly, he could become crisp. The crispness was starting to gel into ice. "I have a new job. In Manchester. BBC North-West Studios are in Manchester. Therefore, in the nature of things, since I'm not a happy commuter, I shall live there. Are you answered?" "You, yes," Guy said. "I don't see why Leonora has to give up her job because you're going to live in Manchester." "Don't you? You're rather slow sometimes. I've noticed it before. Let me explain in simple language. Leonora has given up her job in West London because she intends to get another one in Manchester. She is going to live in Manchester with me. From the end of this month. Leonora is going to live with me because she will be married to me." "Why didn't you tell me about this, Leonora?" "Because she's afraid of your reaction. She's afraid of what you'll do. And who can blame her? Now let's talk about something else. Let's change the subject. We can revert to any of those things you're so fascinated by, house buying or the autumnal weather, any bloody thing, only for God's sake let's not get our tempers running any higher." He was hardly going the right way about reducing Guy's temper. Guy jumped up. Before he could speak, Leonora said, "Please stop quarrelling, the pair of you. Please stop now. I should have told you, Guy, but William's right, you're so violent." "Would you expect me to take it lying down? That he's preparing to take you away? To take you up to the north of England?" "Why not? She'll be my wife. I'll be her husband. If she'd got a job in Manchester, I'd have followed her. The idea of being married surely is that you share each other's lives." "I want to hear what Leonora has to say, not you. Let her speak for herself. She's quite capable of that, I assure you. Now you tell me, Leonora--you weren't going to leave me, were you? You weren't seriously contemplating going to Manchester?" "What do you mean, 'leave me'?" said Newton, very cold now. "You can't leave someone you're not with. Leonora left you seven years ago." "It's a lie!" Guy shouted. "She loves me, she's told me so a hundred times. She isn't going to marry you. What makes you think she is? Her family found you for her and pushed her onto you, but they can't control her mind, they can't touch her heart. She's mine and she always will be..." "Guy..." Leonora came round the table to him. Newton still sat there staring, calm, as cold as ice. "Guy," Leonora said, "you must stop this, you must." "Get him to stop lying to me and then I'll stop all right." "He isn't lying. I'm going to marry him and I'm going to Manchester with him." "I don't believe it. I won't believe it. I'll see you dead before I let you go away with him." "Do you wonder I didn't tell you about it when you go on like this? The reason I didn't tell you was to avoid you going on like this." Guy looked at her, feeling a tide of misery gathering and mounting inside him. He had never felt more like weeping in her arms. He wanted to take her in his arms and beg her not to go. "You won't go, will you, Leo?" She made no answer but her face was twisted as if she was in pain. "That's why you're selling your flat," he said. "That's why he's selling his." "Please don't, Guy, don't go on. Please stop shouting." It was slowly becoming clear to him. "That's why he's getting rid of"--he flung out an arm--"all this shit. All this rubbish," he said, "... these swords. He said he wanted to sell his swords." Guy was trembling. He took two steps to the fireplace and pulled down the swords from the wall. Newton sat there, looking incredulous. Guy threw the naked sword down on the table and tugged the other from its scabbard. Leonora seized his arm. He flung off her hand and leaped back, brandishing the shining sabre. "I'll fight you for her! We'll fight a duel." He was trembling no longer. Adrenaline poured through him, quenching misery. "I'll fight you to the death!"

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

William Newton picked up the sabre from the table and stood looking at it as if it were some strange implement he had heard of but never seen before. He laid it down again, said to Guy, "Why don't you put that down and go home." "He's afraid to fight me, Leonora," Guy said. "It might be unwise." A little smile, probably nervous, had appeared on Newton's horsy face. "They're old fighting sabres, they're not ornamental." "You coward," said Guy. "Where's your honour? Admit it, you're chicken. This is the man your parents chose to be your husband, Leonora. Pathetic, isn't he?" He raised the sabre. It was years since Guy had taken his fencing lessons, but he was strong and fit. He held the sword at an angle, the point level with Newton's eyes. Leonora said in a breathless voice, "I'm going to phone the police." "Why?" said Guy. "Nothing's going to happen to me." "I'm going to phone them unless you put that sword down now." "No, you're not, my dear." The phone on a small side table had a long trailing lead. It wasn't the kind you can plug in. Guy brought the sabre down with a long slicing movement across the lead six inches from where it emerged from the wall. The phone bounced off the table but the lead remained intact. Guy made a grab at it, pulled the lead and wrenched it out of the wall socket. "For God's sake. Are you mad?" "Don't say that to me, Leo. You shouldn't have talked about phoning the police. Stand back, please. Go in the other room, if you want." He added contemptuously, "If there is another room." He turned back to Newton, who had said nothing, who had responded to none of Guy's insults, but merely stood there, the smile still twitching his lips. "Ginger dwarf, miserable runt. Fucking prig." Casually, Newton picked up the sword. Its blade was dull but it looked sharp. For all their shabby appearance on the wall, the swords had been kept in good condition. The two men faced each other, each holding his weapon, but not crossing them, not performing any preliminary ritual. They looked at each other and Leonora watched them, one hand up to her open mouth. Guy was the first to make a move. He swung his sword in two sideways sweeps, to the left and to the right, then made a swift fierce stab at Newton, but the other man skipped quickly round the table, avoiding the lunge. Guy stabbed again, over the table-top, knocking over the wine bottle. Newton ducked, then sprang up at the end of the table where he had been sitting. His sword and Guy's clashed with a high-ringing sound. Guy thrust again and the swords crossed and recrossed. Playing for a moment or two, like a tennis player in a knock-up before a match, Newton suddenly made a sweeping movement that turned Guy's weapon aside. "Pimp," shouted Guy, "ginger dwarf, yes-man, wimp, egghead." Newton started laughing. "I have to tell you," he said, "that I've done quite a bit of this, so if you want to stop now, that'll be okay." "He's trying to say he's good," Leonora shouted. "He fenced for his university." "So did I," said Guy, "the university of life! Now wipe that grin off your face," he yelled at Newton and lunged at him. Leonora put her head in her hands. The swords were simply clashing now, Guy smashing his this way and that, in wild movements without any finesse or control. He sprang back and drove his weapon at Newton in a scooping movement like an underarm serve. Newton didn't skip aside this time but deflected the blade with a single sweep. Guy could feel Leonora behind him. One of her hands clutched at his shoulder. He shook it off. He backed, defending himself. She cried out, "Please, Guy, please stop. I'll get the neighbours, I swear I will. I'll go down to the street and phone the police. You must stop." "For Christ's sake, keep out of this!" He had never spoken to her like that before. She gave a sob. "I love you," he shouted. "I'll always love you. I'll win you!" Newton stood there, legs apart. He wasn't smiling any more. He threw back his ginger hair. For a moment they faced each other, perfectly still. Guy had the feeling Newton would like to stop, would welcome a truce. That made him spring forward and whirl his sword in a movement that, if successful and the blade sharp, would have severed Newton's head. Leonora screamed. But the stroke wasn't successful. Newton parried it. He did so easily, and in a way that maddened Guy, it was so smoothly done and with a grace that made the ringing clang of the blades the more shocking. Newton made a quick riposte, a feint really. He was teasing Guy. He danced with his sabre, making swift covering moves as Guy's sword lunged wildly. Leonora was struggling to raise one of the window sashes. Guy forgot everything he had learned about fencing. He was just a man with a stabbing, cutting weapon. He was doing what an unskilled man with a sword will do, pushing it back and forth to the right and left, and yelling curses with each attack. He could hear himself roaring. She couldn't shift the window but collapsed against it for a moment, her head on her hands. Guy beat at the air, at Newton's blade when his came into contact with it, once striking the shade of the central light and setting it swinging wildly. Leonora's coming away from the window, standing there and watching them as if hypnotized, gave him a fresh impetus. But the silent Newton was no longer menaced by anything Guy did. He was in absolute control of the bout. Sometimes his weapon grazed Guy's, sometimes beat lightly on it. Guy's rage, at boiling point, rose another inch and spilled over. He leaped outside the range of Newton's sabre and made a wild attempt to run him through from the side. The blade missed Newton, not because he parried it with his own but because he contracted his muscles in the nick of time. The sabre point went through his sweater at the waist and ripped the wool from hem to neckline. Newton growled like a bear. His sweater flapped open like an unfastened strait-jacket. He pulled his arms out, stood there in a grubby white T-shirt, his breath rasping angrily. Guy was laughing in triumph. He pulled off his own jumper and threw it across the room. From his success he had gained skill, or at least energy. He began to mix slashes and stabbing, crowing and making Wild West yells. Leonora was watching wideeyed, like a first-time spectator at a bullfight, horrified, yet compelled. Guy began directing his blade in a low line, pointing at Newton's genitals. He twirled the point. He laughed. Shouting insults, he danced up and down, the sword jumping and bobbing in a half-circle at thigh level. It was designed to lull Leonora's lover into a state of unpreparedness, and if the surprise thrust he now made had hit its target, Newton would have got to his feet a eunuch. But this was the last blow Guy was to attempt. It was all over with a frightening suddenness. Newton parried the lunge with a neat turn of his wrist in a lateral defensive movement, riposted at once and caught Guy on the left arm. The point of the sabre cut him in a straight line from wrist to elbow. Guy's sword fell from his hand. With blood fountaining from his wound he toppled over, seizing what first came to hand to break his fall. It was the edge of the table-cloth and with it came plates and glasses, wine bottle, knives and forks. He collapsed onto the floor covered in a litter of sticky china and glass. He could hear Leonora screaming, a manic animal sound. She dropped the window sash and ran to him. Guy shut his eyes, opened them and sat up. His arm was streaming with blood. "Oh God," Leonora sobbed. "Oh God, oh God." "It's all right," he whispered. "I'll be all right." He held the wound but his hand wasn't large enough to cover it. Leonora started ripping up the tablecloth, tearing it into strips. The first bandage she put on was immediately soaked in blood. She was sobbing and gasping. "Don't worry, darling," Guy said, "it's only a flesh wound." This, for some reason, evoked a crow of laughter from Newton, who with ridiculous coolness was wiping the sabre blade and replacing it, unwashed, in its scabbard. He hung both swords back on the wall. "Still want to buy them?" he said. "Oh, William, don't. Haven't you done enough?" "I'm sorry," Newton said. "I shouldn't have fought him." "No, you shouldn't. It was awful. Look what you've done. Phone for an ambulance, now, please." "I can't phone for anything, can I? Not now he's buggered up the phone." Leonora unwrapped the table-cloth bandage and started applying a fresh one. Guy was still sitting on the floor. He got to his feet. His left arm felt rather numb, without pain. There had been no pain, only the initial sting, like an insect biting, when Newton's sword point ripped the skin. Newton sighed and said, "I'll drive you to hospital. I'm sorry about this, Guy. It's a mess. All we can do now is go and find some casualty department." "Thanks, but I'd rather die than have you drive me anywhere." "Okay, be like that, but you'll have to have something done about your arm." "I'll drive him," said Leonora. "I'll drive you, Guy." Everything that had happened was worth it to hear her say that. She had another go with a fresh strip of table-cloth, binding it more tightly this time. One of her scarves made a sling for his arm. "Put your sweater round you." She picked it up off the floor. "Do you want a coat? I expect I could find you a jacket." "Not one of his," said Guy. Newton grinned. "He'd rather die of cold." That made Guy start for him, fists up, in spite of his bleeding arm. Leonora grabbed him, pulled him round, and then the wound did start to hurt, a deep throb beginning. Guy groaned. Leonora's face was wet with tears. She wiped it on another bit of table-cloth. Newton touched her arm and she looked at him, but Guy couldn't read that look. He would have liked to hold on to her going down the stairs but pride forbade it. At the bottom a front door opened and a man, a sleek yuppie with a small moustache, put his head out. "Everything all right?" "Only a duel," said Leonora, with an hysterical edge to her voice. The man didn't seem to take this in. "I thought I heard something. My wife said it was builders." They found a casualty department open in a big hospital half-way up a hill. Guy didn't know the name of it. He didn't really know North London. It seemed to him he must have lost pints of blood. His shirt was soaked with blood. It had cost him nearly two hundred pounds, a deceptively simple and casual garment. The blood would never come out. Some of it had got onto Leonora's track-suit top and there were smears on her white trousers. The pair of them looked as if they had come off a battlefield. He was happy. Of course he realized that it was awful, what he had done. He would be scarred for life. But she loved him. He had won her. Hadn't she reproached the wretched Newton? Hadn't she rushed to him and sacrificed a perfectly good table-cloth to bind up his wound? "I'll pay for the phone to be re-connected," he whispered. She started laughing. It was humourless hysteria. Sobs punctuated it. "Come on," he said. "Everything'11 be okay. You'll see. I'll buy him a new sweater." After that his name was called. A weary doctor cleaned the wound and of course wanted to know what had caused it. An accident with a carving knife, Guy said, an explanation that wasn't believed, but the doctor said no more for the time being. He gave Guy an anti-tetanus injection, put half a dozen stitches in the wound. It was no more really than a deep scratch. "Do you know what that looks like to me? Just as a matter of interest? As if someone quite skilled with the sabres wanted to, if you'll forgive the pun, make his point. Show he meant business but that was enough for now, right?" "I don't know what you mean," said Guy. "I do a bit with the sabres myself, or I used to, in the days when life was normal and I had, you know, what's it called, leisure. Run along now. You can come back next Wednesday and have the stitches out." In the car Guy said, "Are you angry with me?" "I don't know. I think I'm just tired, fed up, sick of the whole thing." "My darling, I understand. I know how you feel." "No, you don't, Guy. That's the trouble. You don't know how I feel, you never have and you never will. Now I'm going to drive you home. Will you be all right on your own?" "I hoped you'd stay with me." "I can't do that. What good would that do? Shall I phone Celeste?" He shook his head. They were waiting at a traffic light and he reached out to take her hand. "Stay with me." "Guy, I'll come in with you and see that you're okay and make you a hot drink. I'll phone you in the morning." He understood she couldn't leave Newton just like that. Newton, who was a madman, a psychopath, was capable of coming round to look for her, armed probably. Besides, she probably wanted to be alone with Newton and tell him in no uncertain terms what she thought of his violent behavior. He said it again and this time she didn't argue. "Have lunch with me on Saturday." "I always have lunch with you on Saturdays." That she came in with him as she had promised nevertheless surprised him. "Your lovely house," she said. "It's the nicest house I know." "Is it? It'll be yours one day." He waited for the denial but it didn't come. "I can't remember where the kitchen is." "You don't need the kitchen. I don't want a drink, not that sort anyway. You shall sit down, my darling, and /'// make you a drink. Something strong, you need it after all that hassle." "I'm driving," she said. "Remember?" "Oh, come on. No one's going to breathalyse you." She took the glass from him, poured soda water into it. He was impeded by his disabled left arm. Something from the evening past came back to him. Perhaps it was the sight of the television set in the corner that he hardly ever switched on. He poured his brandy, a generous measure. "Haven't you got an uncle in television? Something with the BBC? Haven't I met him?" She nodded. "My father's brother, my Uncle Michael. He's the chairman of TVEA. Why?" "I suppose it was through him Newton got this job?" "Of course it wasn't, Guy. It had nothing to do with it. William's going to work for BBC North-West. He told you." "It all comes to the same thing, though, doesn't it? Back-scratching. What's the word? Begins with an N." "Nepotism. Only it isn't. Guy, are you all right to be left? I ought to go." "Where shall we have lunch on Saturday?" "Anywhere you like." "D'you know, I thought for a while in the car that you might say you wouldn't have lunch with me, you might be too cross." She smiled, got up. "Well, now you know. I'm not. Too cross, I mean." "Clarke's again?" he said. "Could it be--well, more central? Didn't we once go to a nice fish place in the Haymarket?" "The Cafe Fish in Panton Street." "That's right. One o'clock? Guy...?" She took his hand. They walked out into the hall together. He stood inside the front door looking at her, his left arm still supported in her red-and-black silk scarf. "Guy--I don't know how to say this." She was trembling. The light in the hall was dim but he could see she had gone pale. Her eyes glittered. "I want to--could we spend the day together on Saturday? I mean, could we have lunch and be together for the rest of the day? Maybe go to the theatre or the cinema, have dinner--oh, I don't know. I'd just like to--but your poor arm! Perhaps you won't feel like..." "Oh, darling!" He put his good arm round her. She nestled against him. "I wouldn't have minded if he'd cut off my arm if this is the result. Don't you know by now you don't have to ask if we can spend the day together? Don't you know it's what I long for?" "That's all right, then." She put up her face. He kissed her as he hadn't kissed her for years, not even that time by the Embankment Gardens. Her warm, responsive lips opened under his. He felt her breasts press against him. His heart knocked and made his hurt arm throb. The strangest thing of all was that he was the first to draw back, to pull away. He had to because of the pain where her body crushed against his wound. She wasn't smiling but gazing at him with a curious, half-hypnotized concentration. "I must go," she said at last. "You said you'd phone me in the morning." "Of course I will." He stood watching the car turn on the cobbles. The night was chilly, very clear. For once, as very seldom happened, stars could be seen up there in the radiant purple, swimming points of light. She waved from the open car window, rolled it up, disappeared rather quickly. It was almost midnight. He went indoors and drank some more brandy until he began to feel light-headed and his arm no longer hurt.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He overslept. He had been dreaming he was going to be married. It was Leonora he was going to be married to and in church, or he thought it was, he couldn't be entirely sure. He arrived at St. Mary Abbots in a taxi and hurried into the church alone. He was late and the guests, hundreds of them, were already there. Breathless, he arrived at the chancel steps, only to realize he had forgotten the ring. He stood, wondering what to do, while behind him a swell of giggling arose from the congregation. It gathered force and became a long sustained roar of laughter. Guy looked down and saw he was dressed in the costume of a fencer, the tight jacket, gloves, breeches, and white stockings. For the first time he was aware he had a mask on his face. The phone ringing pulled him out of this dream before worse humiliation could happen. He reached for the phone and, turning over, felt pain from his sore arm. Memory of the previous evening returned as he lifted the receiver, and with it came a surge of panic. What had he done? He said a cautious "Hallo?" "How are you this morning, Guy?" He could hardly believe it was Leonora's voice he was hearing. How long was it since last she had phoned him? Years. But, of course, things had changed. He remembered more about the night before. Almost incredulously, he began remembering what she had said. "Guy? Are you all right?" "I'm fine, darling. I'm perfectly okay." "Did you get some sleep?" "Like a log. I died. As a matter of fact, the phone ringing woke me." "Oh, I'm sorry. I did wait till nine. I was anxious about you." He closed his eyes at the bliss of it. He said softly, "It's wonderful to hear your voice." "Do you think you should go and see your own doctor today?" "Why? Everything's been done that can be. It's only a bit sore." Downstairs he heard Fatima let herself in and the front door close. "It really is nine. Listen, Leo, did I dream it or did you say you'd spend all Saturday with me?" "You didn't dream it." "Thank God. I've had such strange dreams I don't know what's real and what isn't. If I get tickets for a show, what would you like to see?" He remembered too late that she didn't like that word "show" but preferred "play" and he waited for her to correct him. She only said, "I don't mind. You choose." "I know you don't like musicals. I won't get a musical. Leo?" "Yes, Guy." "Afterwards, in the evening, will you come back here with me?" He knew she would say no. She always did. Her hesitation meant nothing, only that she was looking for the kindest way to say no. One day she would say yes, but he wasn't absurdly optimistic, he knew it would be a long time. He waited stoically. The pause was a long one. He heard her sigh. "Yes, I will," she said. "Of course I will. Anything you say." "Leo, did you really say that? Did you really say you'll come back with me? You'll stay with me?" "I did say that." "Leo, I'm so happy. I'm so happy, darling. I know I've said it before. I can't help it. I'm so happy. Leo, you're not crying?" "Guy," she said, "forgive me." That made him laugh. "There's nothing to forgive. Say you love me. Say I'm the only one for you." "You're the only one for me. I love you. One o'clock on Saturday, then?" "One o'clock on Saturday, darling. Goodbye till then. Take care, save yourself for me." It had happened. She had come back to him. Not a promise of next year, not years ahead, but now, the day after tomorrow. He could confess to himself now that he had doubted, he had sometimes lost hope, but the constancy, the struggle had not been in vain. He had won her. He had fought for her and he had won. The battle scar on his arm he looked at with pride. If he had lost his arm, it would have been worth it. When he had had a bath, for showers must be avoided for the time being with that arm, he wondered if it would be wise to keep the sling on. No blood had come through the dressing. His arm was sore but no more than that. Slyly, he saw through his own doubts about the sling. What he really meant was that he wanted to go on wearing Leonora's scarf. Wasn't that what knights of old did--well, they did in movies--wore their ladies' favours? Susannah had called him Leonora's knight, had said his constancy was beautiful. The scarf Leonora had given him was a silky woven red-and-black thing. He dressed carefully in blue jeans, a pink shirt, a sweater he hardly ever wore but which was coincidentally very much like the scarf, a ribbed pattern in vertical stripes of dark grey and Venetian red. Guy found himself looking into the mirror for longer than he usually did. He was so much better-looking than William Newton, so superior a physical specimen, that it was almost a joke. What he would have liked to do was spend the morning at the rifle club but that would only make his arm worse. He started phoning theatre box offices. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love was what he would have preferred. The price of tickets in the black market would be astronomical but that never bothered him. Leonora didn't like musicals, so that was out. Celeste had told him what M. Butterfly was about and he thought he might have enjoyed seeing it with her, but it wasn't the kind of thing you could take the woman you were going to marry to see. In the end he settled for Ayckbourn's Henceforward and booked two seats on his American Express Gold Card in the third row of the stalls. Next day Celeste phoned to remind him they were dining with Danilo and Tanya and some American friends of theirs who were in London. Guy considered refusing on the grounds of his injured arm but thought better of it. It would pass the time until tomorrow. The dinner party was at the Connaught. The obvious thing would have been to call for Celeste in a taxi. He decided instead on the Jaguar. The idea appealed to him of driving it one-armed. He was going to tell everyone the truth, that he had got his wound in a duel. "You're kidding," Danilo said. The Americans looked to Guy like a couple of gangsters. They were both short, dark, Italianate, showily dressed. One of them had a scar on his cheek the circular shape of the broken-off base of a wine bottle. Tanya was up to her old trick of forgetting to change her shoes and wearing white sandals with her smart black minidress and black stockings. She gave one of the Americans a wink. "Someone got fresh with Celeste, did they?" "It had nothing to do with Celeste." Guy saw her wince, though he had already explained everything to her in the Jaguar on their way there. "A private matter." "Be honest," said Danilo the abstemious. "You did it yourself when you were pissed." It wasn't a very successful party. Tanya talked about her children. The Americans responded as if children were a rare species of mammal and one in which they were uninterested. This didn't deter Tanya, who told anecdotes about Carlo putting red dye into the swimming pool and telling her the gardener had cut his throat before falling in. Guy drank a lot. He moved on to brandy. He had promised Celeste they would leave by ten-thirty at the latest. She had to be at a photo-call in Kensington Gardens before eight in the morning. When it got to ten forty-five, she said she had to go. "Just half an hour and I'll be with you." "No, Guy. It's all right, I'll get a taxi." "I'm not letting you do that." He struggled to his feet and suppressed a cry at the pain in his arm. "I'll drive you like I said." "You're not fit to drive and I really have to go. I've already asked them to get me a taxi." He was aware of only one thing. This way he wouldn't have to have her back to spend the night with him. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow night," she said. They must have made some arrangement. He would phone tomorrow morning and stop her, he couldn't come out with it in front of everyone. Feeling guilty, feeling obscurely ashamed, he touched the lightly resting hand. She said goodbye and was gone. "Nice little looker," said one of the Americans, unbelievably to Guy. Guy thought how extremely embarrassing it would be to take Leonora home with him and find Celeste there. Or for poor Celeste to arrive while he and Leonora were there together. He must give some serious thought to explaining to Celeste the turn events had taken. "We'll drive you home," said Tanya. "I mean, we'll drive your car. We came in a cab, so we can take you home and get a taxi to take us on." Danilo didn't say anything. His frog face was set in grim lines. Guy couldn't remember where he had parked the car and they trudged the dark empty Mayfair streets looking for it. "I'm going to love you if they've clamped it," said Tanya. They hadn't. Guy got in the back. The fresh autumnal air had brought him round. It was nearly midnight, nearly the day that would mark the beginning of his life with Leonora. What would Danilo and Tanya have to say to that? He could have driven himself. He felt perfectly all right apart from his aching arm. They were driving along Knightsbridge when he remembered about Rachel Lingard. Tanya knew all about Danilo's activities--or as far as he knew she did. "Can you put a stop on Chuck, Dan?" "Can I what?" "Just call it off, will you?" Danilo was silent. Guy could tell he was upset. He went the wrong way and got them into the Fulham Road. With a little shrug Tanya said, "Don't mind me. I've had to leam when to shut my ears." "Turn right when you can," Guy said. "Look, I'm sorry. I don't want the three grand back." "I should fucking think not," said Danilo. "But you can do it?" "Ah, shit, Guy, I can live without this." "But you can manage it?" "Frankly, I don't know. I don't know who Chuck's put on the job and Chuck's been in Ireland. Maybe he's still in Ireland. I don't even know if Chuck's boy's doing it or Chuck's boy's boy." Danilo turned left along the Old Brompton Road. Guy said, "You've got a fortnight. Well, two weeks tomorrow. She's away for another two weeks." He was suddenly aware of where they were and what they might see. Danilo said in a bad-tempered way, "Yeah, yeah, okay. It'll take time but maybe not that long. Only don't reckon on doing that kind of business with me again, right? Christ, what is it now?" Guy was tapping on his shoulder. "Please stop, will you? Just for a minute. Just park over there. It won't take long, I promise." "What is all this, Guy?" Tanya was losing patience with him now. "I have to be in the shop tomorrow morning." "Please pull in over there, Danilo." They had to walk back. The tall thin man lay stretched out on the doorstep of the health-food shop. He was dressed in the same soot-coloured rags, but this time he lay on his back, with the cap, which had been a receptacle for alms, covering his face. Guy said, "It's Linus." "You're joking." "No, I'm sure it is. This is the third time I've seen him. I know it's Linus. It's been worrying me, on my conscience, you know. Dan, we can't just leave him here. We'll have to do something for him." Danilo went across the pavement, took hold of the cap and lifted it from the man's face. It woke him. He sat up and began screaming at them, his face contorted, his bright, white, perfect teeth bared. A stream of meaningless obscenity poured from him. "Ah, for Christ's sake," said Danilo. He stuck up two fingers at the screaming man. Guy could see now that it wasn't Linus. He was no more like Linus than he was like Danilo. "At least give him something." "Give him something yourself," said Danilo and he walked back to the car, followed by Tanya. Guy felt deeply disturbed. What was going on in his mind that he had confused this derelict with his old friend? He gave the man a tenner, which had the effect of shutting him up but not of eliciting thanks. He took the note, thrust it into his trouser pocket, and rolled back onto the doorstep, once more covering his face. "Linus is dead," Danilo said when he was putting the Jaguar away in Guy's garage. "They strung him up in Kuala Lumpur. Have you ever thought of joining the AA?" "I've been a member for years." "Danny didn't mean the Automobile Association," said Tanya, by this time laughing helplessly. They went off together to find a taxi. He would drink less when he was with Leonora all the time. If she wanted him to give up smoking, he would have a go at that too. In a month's time he would be thirty and it wouldn't be very many more years before he'd be unable to hold the drink as he could now. When he was happy all the time, leading a contented life, he wouldn't need the drink to cushion him against blows, he wouldn't need his consciousness changed from misery to limbo. He felt none the worse for the excesses of the night before and his arm was much better. The sling wouldn't be needed any more but he wanted to wear it because it was hers. Sentimentally, he thought of wearing her scarf today for the last time and then, when she was back here with him, returning it to her ceremoniously. She would smile her Vivien Leigh smile for him and at last it would be full and unrestrained. What to wear this morning was something of a problem. Although he knew she had never been that keen on Newton, although he had been procured for her and she persuaded to take him, there was something about the man that appealed to her apart from his conversation. And Newton always dressed in clothes that were a combination of the Housing Trust Charity Shop and Dirty Dick's. It had to be faced that nice clothes didn't interest her, either for herself or her man. Perhaps he should start learning to care less about them himself. With that end in view he chose the jeans he had worn the day before, a plain blue shirt in sea-island cotton, and a blue-and-grey-striped seersucker jacket. It still looked over the top, or would to her. Changing the jacket for yesterday's sweater was a real sacrifice for him, but he made it. Carefully, he reknotted the ends of the scarf and arranged it around his neck to support his arm. He was on the point of leaving when he remembered the ring. He still had the engagement ring he had bought for Leonora all those years ago. It was in the safe. He hadn't used the safe, hadn't opened it, for four years, there had been no need to do so. The last time was after Con Mulvanney's visit. He went back upstairs, opened the safe and took out the ring. It was in a small blue leather box and the ring itself, a large square-cut sapphire with "shoulders" of diamonds, sat in a bed of midnight-blue velvet. Guy put ring and box into his pocket. It was twelve when he left the house, much too soon for an appointment in the West End at one. But he had nothing to do. He had already made a careful tour of the house, checking that everything was as it should be to receive her. He had refilled the ice trays in the fridges in the kitchen and the drawing-room bar, arranged on the coffee-table The Guardian, The London Review of Books, and Cosmopolitan, which, wonder of wonders, the newsagent had remembered to deliver, and put into the bathroom that would be her bathroom the various Paloma Picasso toiletries he had yesterday sent Fatima out to buy. There was nothing left to do, and sitting about reading the paper was intolerable. He had made several attempts to phone Celeste and stop her from coming before he remembered she was out being photographed somewhere. At twelve he left to walk part of the way, stopped to look in an estate agent's window, and on an impulse went inside. On their books they had a beautiful house in Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill. The price, they said, ran into seven figures. When they saw he didn't flinch they told him precisely what the price was. Photographs of interiors were produced: a grand staircase, swan-neck-shaped; a magnificent drawing-room forty feet long; octagonal bathrooms in each of the turrets. Guy made an appointment to view for Monday afternoon. By now it was twenty minutes to one, nice time to get there punctually in a cab. The traffic was less dense than usual and the taxi put him down outside the Cafe Fish. It was two minutes to one. She might be there already, it had been known, and those familiar sensations repeated themselves--the little jump his heart gave, his insides tightening, pressure in his head. He paused on the pavement for a moment, gathered himself, went into the restaurant. It was crowded but she wasn't there yet. The girl who came to show him to his table told him that. Smoking or nonsmoking? One day he would choose non-smoking to please Leonora but that time hadn't come yet. He lit a cigarette the moment he was sitting down. Obviously it had been a mistake to come here. The food was good and there was a big choice, but unfortunately a hundred other people knew it too. Of necessity the tables were close together. They wouldn't be able to talk intimately. Guy flicked his fingers at a waiter and when the man came over ordered a large gin and tonic. Brandy would have suited him better but he also realized brandy might not be a good idea at this stage. With careful thought, he had chosen his theatre tickets for the matinee. The performance began at five-thirty, which meant they could have dinner soon after eight. There was plenty of time for everything--it would all be leisurely and beautiful. If there was any time left this afternoon between leaving here and the theatre, she would surely let him take her shopping. The engagement ring he already had, but perhaps a bracelet? Cartier? Asprey? Or perhaps some earrings. He imagined diamonds close up against her glowing face. When they were no more than children and she had first had her ears pierced, he had dreamed of the day when he could buy her diamond earrings. The gin came, it was very welcome, he was thirsty for it. The first sip of the day was always wonderful. It spread peace through his body on long, divergent feelers. He sat back in his seat, looking at the pattern in the weave on her scarf, then at the menu, which was written on the card as well as up in chalk on blackboards. What would she have? She was eating more fish lately, he had been glad to see. She didn't get enough protein. He adjusted the sling on his arm and in doing so caught sight of his watch. It was nearly a quarter past one. That was what came of trusting to the Northern Line instead of taking cabs. It was going to be the Savoy experience all over again, but in less luxurious surroundings. He finished his gin and ordered another. She had been over twenty minutes late, he remembered, for their lunch at the Savoy. It would be just like her to walk here from wherever the nearest Northern Line station was, Leicester Square probably. The people at the next table, four of them, were laughing immoderately. It wasn't coarse laughter or particularly raucous, but it irritated him. His second gin went down very fast. If only you could ask for the bottle in these places and just help yourself as you could at home. He didn't quite like to ask for the bottle. Danilo and Tanya's remarks of the previous evening about Alcoholics Anonymous repeated themselves unpleasantly. The time was twenty-five past one. A waiter came up and asked him if he would like to order. Guy said no rather abruptly. More gales of laughter shook the table next to him. They were drinking champagne, evidently celebrating some anniversary. He had begun to feel hungry in the taxi going round Hyde Park Corner but his hunger had left him. In spite of the gin his mouth was dry. He asked for a large glass of white wine. At twenty to two he began to feel sick. She was forty minutes late. He couldn't remember her ever having been more than twenty-two minutes late. She wasn't coming. He couldn't delude himself any longer that she was coming. Either something terrible had happened and she had met with an accident or she had been prevented from coming. Some member of that awful family of hers had found out what she planned to do, to spend the day, then the rest of her life, with him, and had stepped in to stop it. For another ten minutes he sat on, staring at the street door. Then he got up. He told the imperturbable sullen-faced waiter he didn't want anything to eat after all, a remark to which the response was a Gallic shrug. He paid for his two gins and his wine. Luckily and for once he had a pocketful of small change. In the first empty phone-box that he found he dialled the Georgiana Street number. It was years since Guy had used a phone-box, they had changed in the interim and he had to read the instructions carefully before getting it to work. The ringing began but there was no answer. He dialled again to make sure. Still no answer. He closed his eyes and imagined opening them to see her walking down the street towards the restaurant, running rather because she was in a panic at being late. Of course she wasn't there. He scooped out the money that had come back and dialled Lamb's Conduit Street. All these numbers were stamped on his memory. He knew them better than his own phone number, bank account number. The bell rang and rang, but no one was answering there either. There was no reply when he dialled the St. Leonard's Terrace number and none from Portland Road, though that was a long shot, unless one of them had somehow contrived to imprison Leonora in her former home. The last place he tried was the Mandevilles' house in Sanderstead Lane and he tried in vain. They couldn't all be out. It was plain what was happening. They had ganged up to stand solid against him. They were all refusing to answer their phones. She told them what had happened on Thursday night, told them in all innocence, still believing she could make her own choice as to her future life. Somewhere she had been made a prisoner. No doubt, it was principally her father who had done that, her father who, once his wife had poisoned Leonora's mind against her lover, had produced a husband for her, a tame lackey, an ugly egghead, and then, to make absolutely sure, with his brother's help, found him a job up north where his wife would accompany him. Only it wasn't going to happen that way, Guy thought. Where would they keep her? Portland Road or Georgiana Street? He went back to Scarsdale Mews in a cab. Although he had drunk quite a lot and eaten nothing, he felt clear-headed and very calm. At home he tried phoning again. Methodically he tried each number: Lamb's Conduit Street, Sanderstead Lane, St. Leonard's Terrace, Georgiana Street, Portland Road. Again there was no answer from any of them. He imagined all the phones unplugged, or those people--Anthony and Susannah, Tessa and Magnus, Robin and Maeve, Newton himself--sitting there listening implacably to the continuous ringing. The time was two forty-five. He tried all the numbers again, to unnerve them, to make them jumpy. Then he went upstairs and took his.22-caliber rifle from its case.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

On the way to Portland Road he tried to find an explanation. At last he thought he could understand. It was the duel he had fought with Newton that was responsible for all this. The last straw, her family would call it. He couldn't imagine Leonora telling them about it but Newton would have. While Leonora was out taking him to the hospital, Newton would have been on the phone to her father and then her mother with an account of what had happened. He could hear Tessa's voice: "He's mad, of course. He's a violent, dangerous madman. He'll stop at nothing to get Leonora. The only thing is to keep her away from him until the sixteenth and then you can take her up north and he'll never see her again." And Anthony Chisholm: "He attacked you with a sword? That's a bit much, isn't it? No, I quite agree, it won't do for Leonora to see him again." And Magnus Mandeville: "Leonora should have gone for the police. Of course you couldn't have left her alone with him, I quite see that. But you should have made her go. That was assault, you know, it might even be called attempted murder." And Susannah: "Poor Guy, he's so emotional, so violent. But there's such a lot of good in him too. He's really bad for Leonora, the last person for her. If there's no other way--well, it's very regrettable, but she'll have to be kept away from him by force." He double-parked the car, hoping that its being Saturday afternoon would make that all right. The rifle was in the boot in a black leather golf bag. He was already coming to see it as an awkward sort of weapon to carry on a mission of this kind. Leaving it where it was, he went up the steps and rang the bell, which was still marked LINGARD, KIRKLAND, CHISHOLM. No one answered. He wasn't surprised. His arm felt fine if he didn't move it much, and with automatic transmission there was no need to. He rested it lightly on the wheel. The traffic had thickened up since the morning and it took a long time getting to Camden Town. This time he took the rifle in the golf bag with him. After he had rung the bell and was standing there waiting, he had the sensation of someone looking down on him from above. It was very strong, this sense of being watched. He stepped back, went down a stair or two and looked up. No one was there and all the windows were closed, though it was a mild afternoon. Lamb's Conduit Street next. That wasn't so far away. A parking space was empty directly outside the house. Susannah's window-boxes had just been watered. Water was dripping from them onto the flagstones below. That told him they must be in, someone must be. No one answered the entryphone. He pressed the bell again and heard footsteps on the stairs. A woman Guy had never seen before opened the door. He didn't know her but even before she spoke he sensed that she had been expecting him. "Laura Stow," she said. "I'm Susannah's sister." He could see the likeness. She was a bit older, dressed in jeans and a shirt, a towel twisted turban-wise round her head. She had been washing her hair. He hadn't known Susannah had a sister but he wasn't surprised. Did they have any friends, these people? Did they know anyone who wasn't family? Everyone you met at their houses, everyone you were introduced to was a relation. He said bluntly, "Guy Curran." She nodded, looked at the golf bag in his hand. Anyone with a grain of intelligence could see it was a rifle in there or a shotgun. "I'm looking for Leonora." And then, "You do know who I mean?" "Yes, of course I do. She isn't here. No one's here but me. I'm looking after the house while they're away." "Away?" he said. "On holiday. They've gone away on holiday today." She was patient with him but her eyes went to the golf bag again. "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't help you." It was rehearsed. Someone had prepared her for his visit, taught her to say all this. "Are you sure she's not here? Are you quite sure she's not upstairs somewhere?" For a moment he thought he had frightened her. She had retreated a little. He made his voice gentler, he tried to smile. "Do you think I could come in and--well, look? I'm an old friend of the family." "Look for Leonora? I've told you she's not here. Of course I can't let you in." "I'm going to marry Leonora," he said patiently. She stared, a nervous smile now trembling on her mouth. He shouted in the direction of the stairs, "Leonora! Leo! Are you there? Leonora!" She made an incoherent sound and shut the door in his face. Without being able to see, he sensed she was leaning back against the door, gasping. He hadn't really believed Leonora was in there. She would have come down long before. Even he couldn't believe she was actually imprisoned, tied up, locked in a room. They wouldn't do that--or would they? He imagined this Laura Stow getting on the phone at once to Anthony and Susannah in their holiday hotel. She would probably phone them all to report his visit. Perhaps she'd make her first call to Robin and Maeve, at whose flat it now seemed Leonora was most likely to be. He drove home, left the car in the mews, and went upstairs to replace the rifle in its case. It had been an unwise choice, that cumbersome weapon. The time was five-thirty. His hunger had come back. There was never much food in the house, no more usually than the basic materials for breakfast: bread, various cereals, eggs, Dutch cheese, marmalade, orange juice. Having poured himself a vodka and filled the glass with orange juice, he wondered if he knew how to cook an egg but decided against it. He had some bread and Gouda, finished his drink and dialled the St. Leonard's Terrace number. They still weren't answering. They were still letting the phone ring. Guy cut himself more bread, poured some vodka. He dialled in vain Sanderstead Lane, Georgiana Street, and--out of devilment, as he told himself--Lamb's Conduit Street. Laura Stow answered. She sounded nervous. He laughed in a sinister way and she slammed the phone down. By now he was feeling enormously better. To say he felt fighting fit, in spite of his arm, wouldn't be an exaggeration. A challenge had been made to him. It was as if they had thrown down a glove in front of him and dared him to fight them all. He was suddenly involved in a savage fairy story or cloak-and-dagger adventure. The beautiful princess had been imprisoned in a tower by her cruel father and stepmother. Marry the ginger dwarf or stay there forever! But her rescuer was coming, in his armour and with his weapons, if not on a white horse, in a golden car. He went back upstairs and took out of the wardrobe the new handsome jacket in battleship-grey calfskin he had bought from Beltrami in Florence last May. He changed his shoes for grey leather half-boots. Reluctantly he took off the sling, but he hardly needed it any more. There was no reason why he shouldn't wear the scarf wound round his neck. In the third bedroom, one of the two at the back that looked onto the back of houses in Abingdon Villas, he went to the bureau that stood against the rear wall between the windows. From the top drawer he took the heavy.45 Colt that had been in his possession since he was seventeen but which he had never used. Danilo had got that gun for him. It was while he was protecting the shopkeepers of Kensal. He had let it be known discreetly that he would like to possess a real gun instead of the convincing-looking replica he carried about with him. Danilo brought it into the pub in Artesian Road one night, showed it to him in the men's, and by the time Danilo had pulled the flush, Guy had paid cash for it and the ammunition that came with it. Leonora had seen it and called it a ghastly weapon. He saw what she meant. He hadn't a holster for it. That had seemed unnecessary. He put it on the passenger seat of the Jaguar with his leather jacket on top of it. The evening was growing cold. It was already dusk. For the first time for months he was using the car heater. He lit a cigarette. It took no more than ten minutes to reach St. Leonard's Terrace. Guy couldn't remember if he had actually ever been in this street before but now he was here he was impressed. Robin was evidently doing better for himself than the rest of that family with their shabby duplexes in Bloomsbury and their suburban villas. The flat was in an elegant but substantial house, its architecture classical, with a noble dark blue front door set under a portico whose domed roof was supported by Corinthian columns. Guy wouldn't have minded living there himself. The framed card above the bell was printed MS. M. KIRKLAND, R. H. CHiSHOLM. Very formal. The flat he thought must be theirs had a huge bow window. He had put on his jacket and stuck the gun in the right-hand pocket, which was luckily large. No one replied on the entry-phone when he rang the bell. Guy tried again and then once more. He was coming down the shallow steps when he saw Robin and Maeve approaching from the end of the street. They were arm in arm, closer than that, somehow intertwined, her head turning onto his shoulder, and they were in high sprits, laughing, squeezing each other. But more remarkable to Guy was the way they were dressed. Gone were the jeans and twin sweat-shirts, gone the socks and running shoes. Maeve was in a pale pink silk suit, very low-cut, the neckline plunging in a deep V, the puffed sleeves ballooning from padded shoulders, the skirt very full and very short. It revealed her long legs in white lace stockings from half-way up the thighs. Her shoes were pink and high-heeled and in her left hand she carried a white cart-wheel hat covered in pink roses. Robin wore a pale beige suit, probably wild silk. His tie had obviously just been removed. The tail of it, bronze-andcream-patterned silk, protruded from his jacket pocket. When they saw Guy they stopped, looked at each other, and burst out laughing. More rehearsing had been going on, he thought. They began to walk towards him, smiling broadly. Guy said, "Where is she?" This had the effect of almost doubling Maeve up. She crowed with laughter, she clutched at Robin, gasping. They were both very much the worse for drink. Robin giggled foolishly. "Tell me where she is, please." Guy could feel the gun in his pocket, heavy, cold, weighing down his jacket on the right side. He rested his hand on it through the leather. "I know you've hidden her. You've no business to do that. This is a free country. You can't keep people prisoner against their will." They made their way up the steps to the front door. Robin had his key out. They were still laughing. Maeve actually had tears on her face. Guy could see Robin smiling at her indulgently, amused in spite of himself by her amusement, trying in vain to achieve a straight face. He let out a final, apparently irrepressible, burst of shrill laughter, the neigh of a skittish horse, got his key into the lock, said to Maeve, "Go in, go in, for God's sake. You're making me worse. Every time I look at you it starts me off." Guy was very cold. The adventure story he had been living in for the past half-hour began to dissolve, to melt and flow away. They were real people in a real street and this was reality. He would have liked to take out the gun and shoot them both, there on the steps. He would have loved to do that. If he did, he thought, he would never see Leonora again. That stopped him--that and the fact the gun wasn't loaded. "Where is she?" he said again. Robin, who had stopped laughing now Maeve was inside the house, said like a little boy, "You'll have to ask Mummy." "I'll what?" Growing up suddenly, Robin drawled, "That's what we agreed on. If you turned up, I mean. We decided my mother was the one to tell you. Right?" He went into the house and shut the door. By the time Guy crossed the river it was dark. He chainsmoked as he drove. A drink was what he would have loved, but the drink must wait. He had his leather jacket on with the.45 Colt in the pocket and Leonora's scarf wound round his neck. It smelt very slightly of her scent. At the northern end of Sanderstead Lane he stopped, parked the car and loaded his gun. The street lamps were alight, smoky yellow globes, some half-burned in the thick dark foliage of the trees with which this long street was lined. The surface of the roadway gleamed. No cars were parked along it. All the houses had garages. No one was about, no dog walkers, no girls walking quickly and fearfully on their way to an evening date. A car passed, then another. The place was silent, still, and colder than inner London. He drove on to the Mandevilles' house. There it lay at the back of its long front garden and it was ablaze with light. There were lights on in the bedrooms as well as downstairs, but Guy had no sense that the house was full of people, that, for instance, a party might be in progress. The house looked all the more incongruous because the one next to it, the unoccupied one joined on to it, was in total darkness. Not another car was in sight. No shadow moved against the light behind the drawn but transparent curtains. Yet he had the feeling that he was expected, they were waiting for him. No doubt Robin had phoned his mother and she was prepared. She and Magnus were prepared. Perhaps she had also roped in a bodyguard. He felt the gun in his pocket, patted it like a patrolman in a film. The iron gate clanging shut made a loud clear ringing sound in the quiet. He began to walk up the path. The lighted house seemed to be looking at him. He wasn't to have the chance of getting all the way there, of ringing the bell or using that lion's-head knocker. When he was half-way there, when he had just passed the point of no return, Tessa Mandeville opened the front door. She stood looking at him, silent, unsmiling, apparently unafraid. "Where is she?" Maeve had said that would be on his tombstone. Maybe. Perhaps it would be the last thing he ever said, his dying words. He didn't care. It was all he wanted to say. He repeated it. "Where is she?" "You can come in," Tessa said. Her tone was remote. She seldom used his Christian name, she hardly ever had. "Come in, please. We may as well get it over." Magnus was behind her. Tessa was as elaborately dressed as Maeve had been, in a copper-coloured close-fitting dress with a scroll pattern at neck and hem in bronze and gold beads. Her wrinkled neck with the prominent tendons was hidden under ropes of amber beads. But Magnus was in a pair of old serge trousers and a grey jersey, as if stripped for action. For all that, he had the transparent, fragile look of a grasshopper. They went into an airless, over-furnished living-room. It was intensely hot. Two huge vases held bouquets of flowers that were wilting in the heat. "You'd better sit down." "I prefer to stand," Guy said. "Just as you like. You asked me where Leonora is." Tessa looked at her watch in an over-acted ponderous way. She raised her eyes to his. "As of this moment I imagine they're twenty thousand feet over northern France. Leonora got married at one o'clock today."

CHAPTER TWENTY

The flowers in the two vases seemed to be wilting visibly. They were pale, exotic, fullpetalled. Guy could see they were wedding flowers, formerly bouquets or table decorations. His head swam. Although he had said he wouldn't sit down, he did so. The scent from the flowers was sweet and stale, there was something obscene about it. It was like perfume on an unwashed body. Tessa said, "That's my daughter's scarf you're wearing!" "She gave it to me." He was aware that his voice sounded weak, barely under control. He cleared his throat and said it again. "She gave it to me." "I suppose you've come here for an explanation." Tessa had seated herself opposite him on a sofa whose chintz cover was patterned with flowers curiously like those in the vases, pale pinkish, whitish, pallid lilac, and peachcoloured blown roses. She was a little, sharply cut figure, sitting upright with her hands clasped about her knees. Because of the bright brown of her dress and the gloss on the material, her dark hair shiny and her skin walnut colour, she looked as if cast in metal or carved from wood. Her eyes were very bright, sparkling with satisfaction, with triumph. Guy had taken too hard a knock, been too bludgeoned by it, to stand up to her and fight. His energy had gone and he could feel pressure inside his head. A chill, in spite of the heat of the room, drew his skin into goose-flesh. Hovering nervously, with a kind of ghoulishness, Magnus must have seen this, for he said hastily, "Would you like a drink?" Guy shook his head. Later on he wondered if this was the first time in his life he had refused an offered drink. He summoned from somewhere a voice that approximated to his normal voice. "Is that where you all were? At her wedding?" "That's right," said Tessa. "You've got it right first time. She was married at one, then we had lunch." She was unable to keep herself from smiling, though he could see she tried. Her lips twitched and she sat up very straight. "We've been partying ever since. It was a lovely wedding, everyone said so. We saw them off on their way to Heathrow and Robin tied a shoe to the back of the taxi! He's so naughty, there's no stopping him. I'm sure you'll want to know where Leonora and William have gone. Greek islands--Samos, actually." He didn't believe her. It was to Samos that Leonora had been going with him. Tessa's eyes flickered when she told the lie. He understood she wouldn't dare tell him where they had really gone. He said desperately, though he hated showing them how terribly he had been hurt, how wounded almost to death. "She said she was getting married on the sixteenth. She told me over and over it was the sixteenth, you said it was." Even as he spoke he understood about that wedding invitation on the mantelpiece in Lamb's Conduit Street. It had been to Leonora's wedding, Janice and her husband were no doubt the invitees. The true date of the wedding would have been on it, the ninth, one week earlier than they had deceived him into believing. They had rushed to remove it. If he had seen it, the whole plan would have been spoiled. "Why did she tell me the sixteenth?" Tessa was smiling now, an arch smile with her eyebrows up. He had never seen her look like that before. "Why did she say she'd meet me for lunch as usual today?" The rest of the promises she had made he couldn't bear to utter. Tessa's face had relaxed a little. He sensed, with a kind of shame, that his feeble voice had touched her, that she, savagely triumphant though she was, had begun to pity him. "You have to try putting yourself in our position. Try to think of others for once. My daughter was very seriously worried that if you knew the date of her wedding, you'd go to it and make trouble. I mean, she knows you. We all know you. We know what you're capable of. Look what happened last week when you got drunk and started fighting William. With swords. I mean, it's unbelievable. Fighting someone with swords in this day and age. You're capable of going to a wedding and breaking the place up. You might have forced your way in and shouted to the registrar to stop it--anything. You might have done anything. My daughter has been afraid of you for literally years. She's been living in a nightmare of terror about what you'd do next." By a subtle rearrangement of hope and inhibition, Leonora had become "my daughter." Guy sensed Tessa would never again refer to her by her name when speaking to him. Magnus said in his mild, dry way, "That is why, if my advice had been taken, we would have sought legal means to prevent you from annoying my stepdaughter. No doubt, it would have been an unpleasant step to take initially, but in the long term it would have saved a great deal of trouble and distress." Guy lifted his eyes, which felt heavy, as if full of unshedable tears. His eyes felt swollen. He looked at Magnus. Through the fine soft leather pocket of his jacket he could feel the uncompromising shape of the gun. But it was distanced from him, it was as if he lacked the strength not only to use it but even to lift it out of its hiding place. The numbness that comes with shock wasn't unknown to him, but it was a long time since he had felt it. "Forgive me," she had said on the phone yesterday morning. He understood now why she had said it. "Forgive me." Her voice had been thick and unsteady as his eyes were now, full of tears. "Forgive me for the lies they've made me tell you, for deceiving you, for this ultimate terrible lie that I will meet you tomorrow and be with you forever." Tessa had been speaking. Words, sentences, whole paragraphs had flowed out of her unheard by him. He picked up a word or two here and there: "cream silk," "yellow roses," "white gold." He turned to her. Again the feeling he had was unfamiliar, a sense of agony that people are capable of such refined and calculated cruelty. "I don't want to hear about that," he said, and his voice was stronger. In a curious way it was a new voice, hard, clipped, stiff with contempt. I have died, he thought, and been born again differently, with a new voice, a new set of values. "I don't want to hear about that." Anger was beginning to return, and that was the same, the same old anger. "Don't give me that rubbish, what she wore, the fucking flowers, don't give me that shit." "And don't speak to my wife like that!" "Are you going to stop me?" He felt the gun again. Magnus made a pettish sound, a "pshah!" sound, and Guy knew he was afraid. He could have laughed if laughter had been something he were capable of. But his head felt heavy, his eyelids were heavy. "Whose idea was this?" he said. "I beg your pardon?" Tessa sounded very sarcastic, all superiority and Lady Muck, the short-lived pity vanished. "I asked you whose idea it was, to con me into thinking Leonora was getting married a week later than she was. It wasn't her idea, was it? She didn't think that up." "What does it matter whose idea it was? I can't remember whose idea it was. It wasn't mine. I wish it had been, I wish I'd thought of something so--well, so simple and so effective. Let me tell you, my daughter may not have thought of it herself, but she was extremely happy to go along with it. She jumped at the chance." "She was corrupted," he said. "All of you, you corrupted her." "If getting someone away from a person who's frightening them to death is corrupting them, then long live corruption." "Leonora wasn't frightened of me. She loved me. She asked me to forgive her." Guy turned to Magnus and said, "I will have that drink, after all." Tessa burst into laughter. "You're incorrigible, aren't you? You've got the devil's own nerve." She mocked his tone, " 'I will have that drink, after all.' You're not a friend of ours, you know. You're not a friend of this family. You forced your way into it God knows how many years ago and we've been trying to get rid of you ever since. You never seemed to understand: You've no place among us, you're not our kind of person. To be perfectly frank, no matter how much money you've made, you don't belong in our class. Basically, you're still an Irish yob, a street toughie. It'd be an insult to the working class to say you're working class, you're not, you're an erk from a slum and you always were." There was a tap on his shoulder and he looked up to see Magnus's death's head above him, a glass of something held out in the papery, slightly tremulous hand. He hadn't been asked what he wanted. Something Magnus thought suitable (or something he'd got most of or didn't himself like) had been brought. Medicine. A remedy for shock. In fact, it was whisky, slightly diluted with water. The taste of it brought Guy the faint nausea whisky always did, then the beginnings of a surge of energy. "The absurd thing," Tessa was saying, "is that you ever supposed my daughter might marry you, might be allowed to marry you." "She's of age, Tessa," said Magnus, legal as ever. "No doubt she could make her own choice about that. She had made her own choice, in point of fact." "No, she hadn't," Guy said. "Not in point of anything. Others made it for her, and that's the real point. Your wife was right when she said that about not being allowed. You lot, you Chisholms and whatever else you are, you didn't allow her to do what she wanted." "What utter nonsense! I honestly wish I'd made a tape recording of the things my daughter said. I honestly do. The number of times I asked her why she bothered with you and she said seeing you was the only possible way. She played along for the sake of peace, for the sake of being free to do what she liked for the rest of the week, that's what she did." "If only she'd seen the perfectly reasonable step of applying for an injunction as feasible..." "Well, she didn't, Magnus. She didn't want to, I quote, 'hurt his feelings.' She was always far too soft-hearted for her own comfort. Unlike our guest here, she put others first. She would have done anything to avoid hurting him. But it doesn't matter now, it's all in the past, it's over. She's married. And when she and William come back from--er, Samos, they're going straight up north. They won't be coming back to London. And if you imagine I'm telling you my daughter's new address, you must be even more mad, disturbed, whatever they call it, than I thought." Guy felt for his cigarettes. They were in the pocket that the gun wasn't in. He put one in his mouth and lit it, watching her. She reacted predictably. "I don't allow smoking in this house." "Too bad," he said. "If you want me to put it out you'll have to do it by force. D'you want to have a go? You or him?" "It's outrageous," she said. "You shouldn't make rules like that if you can't enforce them." "Magnus," she said, "make him put that cigarette out." Magnus's reply was to produce an ashtray, which he set at Guy's elbow. Guy said, "Your ex-husband got Newton that job through his brother. Leonora as good as told me that. He introduced Newton to her and then he pulled all the strings he could to get him a job in the north." Tessa began to pantomime coughing. She covered her mouth, shivered a little. "That may be. I know nothing about that. I haven't seen Michael Chisholm for years." She put out a hand to her husband. "I think I'll have a drink too, darling. I notice you didn't ask me. Gin and ginger ale, and why don't you have one too? Since," she added, "we're apparently saddled with a protracted discussion about his--well, what would you call it? Paranoia?" "Frankly, Curran," said Magnus, "don't you think it's time you left? My wife's told you a great deal more than you could reasonably have expected in the circumstances." "I'm not going yet. I want to know whose idea it was to set me up." Tessa said in a bored voice, "I'm not sure if I follow you. How were you 'set up'?" "Deceived, then. I was led to believe the wedding was next Saturday." Guy hesitated, rephrased it. "No, I was led to believe there would be no wedding." / love you, I'll come to you, anything you say. He remembered her kiss on the night when his arm was wounded, and he touched his arm, touched the silky stuff of the scarf. If I sob when I start speaking, he thought, I will kill them both. "Who," he said, and his voice was steady, "put her up to that? Who made her tell me the wedding was on the sixteenth and then made me think the wedding was off? Who was it?" "I told you, I don't know." Tessa took the glass her husband held out to her. She held it up as if for a toast, was going to say something, but thought better of it and drank. "It doesn't matter who it was, we all approved." "She shouldn't have told him untruths," Magnus said unexpectedly. "I mean, if he's right about her saying she told him she wasn't marrying William, she really shouldn't have done that." "What? Whose side are you on, pray? Let me tell you, she was entirely justified in telling him anything. Anything. And if you say another word about an injunction I shall scream." Magnus took no notice. The creases on his face ironed themselves out a little, like screwed-up paper smoothed by painstaking fingers. He was smiling. He said, "I recall perfectly whose idea it was. I was quite taken aback. It seemed so--well, audacious." His wife made an impatient gesture with her hand. "It's quite unimportant who thought of it. The thing is that it worked and all that miserable business in the past is the past." She began staring hard at Guy, looking into his eyes, into both his eyes. He could tell she wasn't in the least afraid of him, and he wondered at that. She was observing him quite coolly, even clinically, like a state torturer she would ask him briskly if he had anything to say before she started with the thumbscrew, but she didn't. "That's it then," she said, "all out in the open. And now I think you should go." "Oh, I'm going. I don't want to stay here. Why would I? Guy stubbed out his cigarette but left it smoking a little. He looked at Magnus. "Okay, whose idea was it?" "Idea? You mean, who thought of that business of the wedding date? There ought to be a name for the relationship. I ought to be able to say something like my 'stepwife,' but that wouldn't quite do, would it? I'm simply obliged to call her by her name--that is, Mrs. Chisholm, Susannah Chisholm." The man enjoyed saying all that, Guy thought disgustedly. He enjoyed spitting out all that pedantic rubbish. Then he realized what the man had said. "Susannah thought of it?" "We were at some family gathering. Very civilized. It couldn't have happened when I was young, ex-husbands and ex-wives all matey together. But it's very pleasant, I'm not complaining. Mrs. Chisholm--that is, Susannah--came out with it. It certainly appealed to my wife, didn't it, darling?" "Yes, it did. Of course it did. I was thrilled." Tessa, who had said she couldn't remember, now seemed to have acquired total recall. "I was tremendously grateful to Susannah. I was only too happy to help work out the details. I played my part in it, don't you remember? I'm sure you remember my coming round to that house of yours and making a point of telling you the wedding was on the sixteenth. If I'd had my way, you'd have been sent an official invitation for the sixteenth." Her husband nodded. He nodded and nodded like one of those wobble-headed dogs drivers have in the rear windows of cars. "Leonora didn't care for it, though. Wouldn't do it at first. She said it was wrong, but I said to her, 'There's nothing illegal in telling a white lie.'" "I don't remember that, Magnus. I think you dreamt that up." She coughed again, reached over, and with a shudder ground out Guy's cigarette end. "It was wonderful for Leonora, it took away all her worries." "Needs must when the devil drives," said Magnus, his eyes gleaming, leaving little doubt as to whom he meant by the devil. Guy got up, patting his pocket where the gun was. Tessa's eyes followed his hand. The telephone was beside her on a low table, within easy reach. He had no sword to cut the wires. With his wounded arm, he lacked the strength to pull them out of the wall. He wouldn't have wanted to anyway, but he put his hand into his pocket and felt the smooth cold metal. "Where have they gone?" "Where have who gone?" Tessa had got up too. "Anthony and Susannah. They've gone away on holiday." Or was that a lie too, put about by the sister? "I was told they were away." "Only for a few days. I wouldn't dream of telling you where. It's been quite bad enough our having to put up with this interrogation, but I took that on myself. I volunteered. I said to send you here and I'd be the one to face you. That was to save the others. I felt it was the least I could do, so you can be sure I'm not going to drop poor Anthony and Susannah into it at this stage. Anyway, they can't tell you any more than I've told you." He felt the gun and thought again of killing them. If he did that, he would spoil his chances of finding Anthony and Susannah. He took his hand out of his pocket. Breaking the place up, even kicking the vases of flowers over, would spoil his chances of finding Anthony and Susannah. Magnus Mandeville was the kind of man who wouldn't hesitate before getting on to the police. He was probably on to the police about something or other every couple of days. Guy looked from one to the other of them and then he looked away, sickened. He thought, she is married. While I waited for her in that > restaurant, at the very moment set for our meeting, she was getting married. I tried to make those phone calls, I went from house to house, I saw myself as her rescuer. All the time I was doing that, she was at a party, her own wedding party. She was drinking champagne and laughing and being congratulated. The flowers in this room had been in that room, she had probably smelt them, touched them, perhaps even carried some of them as a bouquet. He walked out of the room and across the hall, opened the front door, slammed it and walked down the long path to the gate. They were watching him, he knew that, but he didn't look back. They had won, all of them. Tessa and Magnus, Rachel, Maeve and Robin, Anthony's brother and Susannah's sister, Anthony and Susannah. They had done what they had set out to do four years before. It had taken four years to accomplish it, but they had done it, and the instigators, the leaders of the plot, were Anthony and Susannah. He sat in the Jaguar. He switched on the engine and saw the digits on the clock light up: eight fifty-two. All these things had happened, his life changed, he himself changed, and it was still only ten to nine. It wasn't believable, so he looked at his watch. Ten to nine. He drove a little way and parked the car again. He parked simply because there was a space at the kerb and no yellow line. The cigarette he lit was so comforting it nearly made him cry. How could he have considered giving up smoking? He would never give it up. When his head cleared and he could think again he would remember where Anthony and Susannah had gone. Susannah had told him where they were going. She had told him that day when he called in at Lamb's Conduit Street. He had forgotten, but it would come back. On the other hand, he could phone the sister. What was her name? Laura Stow. He could phone Laura Stow. It was only ten to nine--well, five past now. He could be home by a quarter to ten. That wasn't too late to phone someone. He wouldn't be himself on the phone, he would think of some tale--an urgent message for Anthony, a package to be delivered express... All of them were guilty--Magnus and Tessa, Rachel, Robin and Maeve, Laura Stow and Michael Chisholm, but most of all, Anthony and Susannah. It had started with Susannah's opening that letter from Poppy Vasari. That was the beginning of their vendetta against him. Then Anthony had set to work, forbidding her to go on holiday with him, preventing her from borrowing the money for the flat in Portland Road from him. Negative moves, all of them, but the next one had been positive. The next one had been finding a husband for her, introducing her to William Newton. It was as bad as Indian immigrants arranging marriages, he thought. The husband secured, all that remained was to get a job for him in the north of England, far away from the man she really loved. And the final step was Susannah's plan to get her married in secret, a week in advance of what he had been led to expect. Anthony and Susannah had master-minded the whole thing, made the plans, carried out the operation, brought it to a triumphantly successful conclusion. The others were no more than their servants, willing and obedient, awaiting instructions. And Newton was their pawn, an innocent nonentity. How much had they paid him to fall in with their plans? Guy started driving home. On Battersea Bridge he stopped, left the car and looked down at the brown, gleaming, dirty water of the river. He took the blue leather box with the sapphire engagement ring in it out of his pocket and, after a very small hesitation, threw it into the water. His thoughts reverted immediately to Anthony and Susannah Chisholm. The world was not big enough to hold within it himself--and them. He wouldn't rest while Anthony and Susannah were still alive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was normal for the lights to be on. There was a timer arrangement that switched them on as dusk fell. He left the car in the mews, let himself into the house, and went straight to the phone in the living-room. The directory in his brain that held a list of Chisholm numbers came up immediately with the one for Lamb's Conduit Street. A man answered. Laura Stow probably had a husband. Guy said he was Wing Express Carriers of South Audley Street with an urgent packet for Mr. Chisholm, and where could he reach him? If Laura Stow herself had answered he would have disguised his voice, but with the husband it wasn't necessary. The man wasn't suspicious. He gave Guy the name of an hotel in Lyme Regis. Guy fetched himself a drink, a very large brandy, a triple. On the table, where he had left them, lay The London Review of Books and The Guardian. He thought he had left Cosmopolitan magazine there too but he couldn't have because it wasn't there now. Other things came to mind, the Paloma Picasso perfume and bath essence he had put in the bathroom, the house he had arranged to view on Monday. Rage that was as much misery as anger took hold of him and he seized the two papers, pulling them to pieces, tearing the sheets. He cursed as he did it, holding his head up, shouting at the ceiling--or God. He could hear his own voice raving as if it were someone else's. He kicked the table, drummed with his fists on the wall. "Guy," someone said. "Guy, what is it?" He turned round. Celeste was standing in the doorway. v "Sweet Guy, what's happened?" "Oh, God. Oh, Christ." He had forgotten their date, or rather forgotten that he hadn't succeeded in cancelling it. They had arranged for her to come here and she had come. How long ago? It was almost ten. "Celeste." He simply spoke her name, his voice all ragged and rough from the shouting. "Celeste." "I thought something had happened to you. I thought, Guy's had an accident." As if it were not himself but another man seeing her, as if he saw through that other man's eyes, he thought how wonderful she looked. Her long dark chestnut hair hung loose, but still in the ripples made by plaiting. An inch-wide gold band held it off her face. She wore a black silk sweater and a black skirt densely embroidered in turquoise and blue and pink and red. Everything was perfect, from the tiny gold studs, snail shells, in her ears, to the bracelets of gold wire, to her flat gold-embroidered blue-and-green silk pumps. He closed his eyes and saw Leonora in navy-and-white washed-out cotton and dirty running shoes. The pain of it made him wince. "Are you hurt?" she said. "Is it your arm?" "Celeste, I'm sorry I wasn't here. I forgot you were coming. I'm sorry." If he used those words and asked her to forgive him ("forgive me"), he would start crying. "Awful things," he said carefully, trying to be careful, "have been happening." "What things, Guy?" He lit a cigarette and gave her one. He tasted the brandy. It was good but it made him shudder. "I've got to go out again. I only came home to make that phone call. But I've got to go out soon. I'll drive through the night." "Can I come with you?" "No. I have to go alone. You stay here and sleep. Okay?" "I'd like to come with you. I could drive you." She didn't say he soon wouldn't be fit to drive but that was what she meant. Still looking at him, she knelt down and began picking up the pieces of torn newspaper. "Oh, leave that." He put his hands up to his head. "Celeste, she didn't come today. She's married. She got married while I was waiting for her in the restaurant." "What?" He said it all again. It was easier the second time. She sat beside him and he told her all about the Chisholm conspiracy. Celeste listened in silence. When he had finished she was still silent, then she said, "That was a terrible thing to do." He nodded. He had always liked the way she spoke, with that faint touch of accent that is Caribbean, the stress on the last syllable of words. "Teri-bull" was what she said. He looked at her affectionately. It came to him that she understood, she had always understood. "They ganged up against me," he said. "They set out to turn her against me and they succeeded." "I meant what she did was terrible. What she did. It was wicked, Guy. A good person wouldn't do that." He jumped up and stood a few paces from her. The warm feelings he had a few minutes before were gone. She continued to look at him. "She's twenty-six years old," she said. "She does her own thing. She does what she wants. You have to face that she wanted it. No one could make her, she's not a child or an animal, she's intelligent, she's got a lot more brain than me and I'm younger, but I'd never do what people told me, never, never. And she didn't. She did what she wanted. She enjoyed it, I really think she enjoyed it. You said she stood there and watched you fight William. She liked you fighting over her and making a goddess of her and not asking for anything in return." His body trembled. He would have liked to kill her. His right arm itched to rise and his hand to strike her a swinging blow. Something stopped him, an old gallant shibboleth that you don't strike a woman. You may kill her but you won't hit her. He held his hand in the other hand and the scarf touched it, the silky scarf that was Leonora's. All that he would ever have of her, he thought. "You're jealous," he said. "You always have been." She shook her head. He didn't know if she meant yes by it or no. "Leonora's in love with William, Guy. Her father didn't find her a husband, she found him. She loves him." "How would you know?" "She told me. That day in the restaurant. She said, "I'd like to think of Guy loving someone the way I love William and them loving him back." "It's funny you never mentioned that before." "I tried to tell you. You wouldn't listen." He went to pour himself another drink. The night had become very quiet, though it was Saturday and early yet. He heard her say, "Where are you going?" "A long way. To Dorset." The brandy nauseated him. It had never had that effect before. "I want to see Anthony and Susannah." There must have been something in his eyes to tell her. "I've hidden the ammunition for your gun. When you didn't come I had a sense, a premonition." By gun, she meant his.22. She didn't know about the Colt. "I'll never tell you where it is. You'd have to kill me first." "You can stop interfering in my affairs, Celeste. You're not my wife. You're not even my girl-friend. You're just a girl-friend. Isn't it time you got that straight?" He wanted to hurt her. Sometimes, in the past, he had seen her wince and he wanted to see it again. But her face was calm. She was still. "Have you ever thought," she said, "that if you hadn't been chasing that dream, you had what was best for you right here at home? You and I, we've got everything in common, Guy. We like all the same things. We want to do the same things. We've got the same tastes. You don't love me but you would one day if you gave it half a chance. I love you. I don't have to tell you. We've been good lovers, haven't we? We've been good to each other there, haven't we? There's never been a better for me--has there for you? Has there? Be honest, Guy. Have you had a better, more loving lover than me?" "I told you," he said, "from the first I was in love with Leonora." "I know what you said. What you say and what really is, they're not the same. D'you know your life's one hundred per cent illusion?" "You're talking about things you don't understand. Leonora is the great love of my life. She is my life." He remembered that utterance Leonora had denied, had attributed to a character in some book. "I am Leonora," he said. "We were one person." The brandy was making him wild and slurring his speech. "I'm dead without her. Life's meaningless without her." For a moment he thought Celeste was going to laugh at him. She didn't. She said softly, "How many times did you actually make love to her?" It struck him as a monstrous impertinence. "That has nothing to do with it," he said stiffly. "From that first time you told me about, on a grave or whatever, all those years ago--how many times, Guy?" It was like one of those anti-Catholic jokes, priests in the confessional and the little Irish girl kneeling. "How many times, my child?" Celeste was looking at him very seriously, though. She wasn't joking. He thought back to those early years, but he could only remember Kensal Green, the long summer grass, and the butterflies. "Does it matter?" "I should think it matters to you." "Five or six times," he muttered. "Oh, Guy," she said. "Oh, my sweet Guy." He shrugged his shoulders, looked away. Suddenly he was aware of tiredness, heavy and dark, covering him like a blanket. He reached for the brandy and drank what was left. The cigarette he lit tasted ashen from the first draw. "She liked it," Celeste said. "You were right when you said she wanted to meet you on Saturdays and have you phone every day. She liked having you on a string. What did it cost her? Nothing. It was flattering, having you hanging after her, you so handsome and rich and nice, Guy, and her not wanting anything from it but people knowing you were in love with her. She could get herself another boy-friend and fix up to marry him but you'd still be there, phoning her every day and taking her out to lunch on Saturdays, and her not having to pay a thing, not even sleeping with you." "It wasn't like that," he said, but it had been. "Get me another drink, would you?" "Aren't you going to drive through the night?" "Get me another drink, please." He would go to Dorset first thing in the morning. That would be best. When Celeste was asleep. He always woke early. Fresh, revived, he would make a start at eight and be there by midday. It occurred to him that he had had nothing to eat all day except that bread and cheese in the afternoon, but he didn't want anything. For the first time in years he hadn't gone out to a restaurant or someone else's house to eat his dinner. In the Chinese bed he lay for a little while apart from Celeste. He was thinking about his plans for tomorrow. It would be better to have a night's rest first. When he got to Lyme he would walk straight into the hotel and ask for them. The clerk in reception would tell him they had gone out and he would go in search of them, along the cliffs maybe--Were there cliffs at Lyme? There must be. He could see them in the distance, walking along the beach at the water's edge. The Colt was still in the pocket of his leather jacket. Let it stay there. In the morning he would put on his jacket and go. How would they feel, what would they do, when they saw him in the distance, walking along the sands to meet them? The wide empty beach, the vast sea, no one else there. Nowhere to run to, but they would run... An image came to him of Leonora's smile, coquettish, controlled, secret, Vivien Leigh's smile in Gone With the Wind. It was her wedding night. Not that this meant much, she had been living with the man on and off for weeks. How cruel she had been to him! He had never supposed he could think of Leonora as cruel, but he did now and with self-pity and wonder... Celeste's slender hands touched his face and she brought her lips to his, very soft and warm. She could speak through a kiss, he had never known anyone else who could do that. "Sweet Guy, I love you. I want you to make love to me." He did. He thought that in order to do so he would have to conjure up Leonora, never difficult for him, but this time she refused to appear, or Celeste's presence was too strong to admit ghostly intruders. It was as if Celeste were determined to dispel by her love everyone but herself and him. This was Celeste in his arms and no one else, her eyes open and shining, her voice silenced. He could feel emanating from her a curious concentrated power, and the word "witchcraft" came into his mind. Inside her body, her self, was a healing white magic. It was a kind of boast of his that he could never sleep late. He had hardly expected to sleep at all, only to rest. But when he woke up, the hands of his carriage clock told him it was after nine and Celeste still lay wrapped in sleep, as deeply burrowed into sleep as if it were still the small hours. This way it was better, he could make his escape without her knowing, go without her. He showered. It struck him as absurd that a man should bother to wash his body all over, soap himself and stand under these power-driven cascades of hot water, before going off on a killing mission. Why bother with anything? Why stand here making tea, waiting for the kettle to boil? Why consider, wrapped in his towelling robe, what clothes to put on? There should be nothing between his determined aim and its accomplishment. He should already have been on his way. A light mist lay over the little garden. The sun's rays had already begun to pierce it. All summer long the lilies had bloomed on his pond, they were still in bloom now in the autumn. He had a ridiculous absurd desire, immediately suppressed, to go out there and stroke the bronze dolphin's head. But he opened the French windows and felt the mild breath of the morning. His head ached, but normally. Most mornings his head ached. It didn't amount to the monumental, hammer-ringing, bone-splitting wrenching-apart of brain fibres he called a hangover. Housework wasn't something he ever did, not even washing a cup, but he knelt down now and began picking up the torn pieces of paper from the floor and carrying them to the kitchen. The kettle boiled, its light went out. He made tea, a tea-bag in each mug, then decided against waking Celeste. Silently, so as not to disturb her, he put his clothes on--jeans, a black T-shirt, the most sombre pullover he had, a plain navy thing with a polo neck. It came to him that he dressed like that because this most resembled the garb of an executioner. He put Leonora's scarf round his neck, took it off again and pushed it into a drawer. In the mirror he saw himself as Anthony and Susannah would see him, approaching them along the beach. He imagined the jacket, the heavy pocket, and he mimed reaching into it for his gun. And then he said to himself, "You're playing games, stop playing games, you know you're not going to Lyme, you're not going anywhere and you're not going to kill anybody." Last night he had been. Hot with angry pain, he had cared for nothing but his revenge, nothing else mattered. There was no future. A night's sleep had changed that, Celeste had changed it. He would have gone, he thought, if she hadn't been there. He would have gone last night. And Anthony and Susannah would be dead by now and he arrested or else dead by his own hand. I don't want to die, he thought, I don't want to be imprisoned. I want to be free. He was free. By what Leonora had done she had freed him. There would be no more enslavement to the phone, no more Saturday lunches that brought as much suffering as pleasure. The idea was so novel that he sat down to think about it, sat down outside in the pale sunshine on one of the white chairs. He wouldn't stop loving her, he couldn't. He would always love her. In a cool, sane, very grown-up way he knew he would be in love with her all his life. That was the way it was. It sounded melodramatic, but it was true that he'd met his fate that day in the street when he was there with Danilo and Linus and she had come along, a little girl, and stood there watching them. But she was gone now, she was lost to him. He had thrown the ring he bought her into the Thames. She had married someone else, and if they ever met again it would be in the company of others and with all of them there: Tessa and Magnus, Anthony and Susannah, Robin and Maeve, Rachel Lingard and Uncle Michael, maybe Janice and her husband. And he would be there with Celeste. Why not Celeste? She had saved him last night. She always saved him. It was true what she had said about the way they were together. They were good together, they had everything in common, they could talk to each other, they could be silent together, there was between them no shame or pretence. She loved him the way no one had ever, all his life long, loved him, and he was fond of her. Even he, tough as he was, street-wise baby grown up, one-time dealer in Class-A drugs, gangster, entrepreneur, and sharp businessman, even he needed to be loved. Why don't we try? he thought. Why don't I try to make a go of it? What can we lose? He felt an extraordinary hollow lightness at the thought of no more phone calls, no more fantasies, no more sick longings. If he had exacted his revenge he would have lost everything... "Oh, Leonora," he said aloud as he went back into the house. It had been such a long haul, so long for someone of his years, only twenty-nine years old but for fourteen of them in thrall to love. "Oh, Leonora." Passing into the hall, he had a look at the Kandinski. He had never liked it. No matter what people like Tessa Mandeville said, it was hideous. Having it there was all pretence. He would sell it. He took the Colt out of his jacket pocket, sat down on one of the Georges Jacob chairs, and emptied it of its ammunition. From upstairs Celeste was calling to him. "I'll bring you your tea," he said. If it were Leonora lying up there, in his bed, his wonderful Chinese William Linnell bed, waking to put up her arms to him.,. The time for these fantasies was past. He carried the mug of tea upstairs. She said, "Sweet Guy, thank you. Did you sleep well? Do you feel better? Ah, yes, I can see you feel good this morning." He sat on the bed beside her. He held her hand as he might hold the hand of a sick person in a hospital bed. Celeste wasn't ill, she was young and healthy, glowing with health and vitality. Her dark hair shone like a tiger's-eye jewel. He thought he would buy her a necklace of tiger's eye. I will try to love her, he thought, oh, I will try. If willing it will do it, I will do it. The doorbell rang. He couldn't help remembering how once, when that had happened, he had been sure it was Leonora. It couldn't be Leonora now. It couldn't be any of her family either. He let go of Celeste's hand, said to Celeste, "We'll do something nice later. We'll drive out to the country. We'll have a nice day." The bell rang again when he was half-way downstairs. Someone was very insistent. He opened the door and saw two men standing there, the older one, a white man in a suit, looking like an accountant. The black man, who was about his own age, wore jeans like his own and a polo-necked sweater also like his own. He looked like an executioner, and there was also something familiar in his face. The man in the suit said, "Mr. Curran? Mr. Guy Curran?" Guy nodded. "I'm a policeman, we're policemen. I expect you'd like to see our warrant cards, save you asking. I'm Detective Inspector Shaw of the Serious Crime Squad, and this is Sergeant Pinedo. May we come in, please?" It was Linus. He must know Guy, recognize him as his old street companion, but he gave no sign of it, and Guy said nothing, only looked at him. So that was what had happened to Linus, he wasn't a down-and-out or a drug bandit executed for smuggling, but a policeman. The dark face, fuller now, less handsome, seemed rigid, fanatical. They said a knife edge separated the policeman from the criminal, while the affinity between them was strong. Linus had chosen to hunt rather than be hunted. Guy backed a little to let the two men in, and the light from the open door fell on his Colt, which still lay on the little table. Shaw said, "Do you have a firearms certificate for this weapon, Mr. Curran?" "Yes, of course." But he hadn't and they would ask to see it. "For a rifle, yes," he said. "For a twenty-two." "This isn't a rifle," said Shaw. He didn't touch the gun. He walked down the hall and into the living-room, Linus following him. Linus still walked with that pimp roll, hips stiff, thighs together, shoulders on the move. The thin man in the grey suit sat down on the sofa in Guy's living-room, having looked neither to the right nor the left, having ignored the Kandinski. "What is it you want?" "We're making inquiries into the death of Mrs. LlewellynGerrard." "I don't know any Mrs. Llewellyn-Gerrard." Guy felt enormous relief. This must be some neighbour. They were inquiring at every house in the mews. It was one of those cases of a woman found stabbed in a bedroom or dead of an overdose. It happened all the time. Shaw was looking narrowly at him. "Mrs. Janice Llewellyn-Gerrard," said Linus. "Of Portland Road, West Eleven." "Janice," Guy said, all wonder. "Yes. Yes, I suppose I do know her. If it's who I think it is. But Portland Road? I know some other people in Portland Road." He sounded confused and breathless, he could hear it in his voice. Shaw was looking at him. Linus was looking at him. "She's dead?" he said, trying to make things better. "What did she die of?" "She was murdered." Linus's gold tooth gleamed. He was all innocence. He didn't understand, he said, "How was she murdered?" "It went wrong," Shaw said. "The man was seen. He's in custody." Guy thought he sounded proud of himself. "He's been in custody since an hour after it happened at eight last evening." "You mean she was mugged?" "No, I don't mean that. He rang the doorbell, but the entry-phone didn't work, something like that, so she went down. He shot her at point-blank range, through the chest and the head. She died immediately, she can hardly have known what happened to her. But her husband had come down behind her and seen it all. He was able to make an identification." "We'd like you to come with us, Mr. Curran," said Linus. He had lost the accent, Celeste's Caribbean. He talked like any policeman on his way to the top. The first black Commissioner, thought Guy. "Down to the station. We'll do better down there." "Me?" said Guy. "Why me? You've got someone for this, you said so. You said you'd got him in custody." "Charlie Ruck, yes. Would you like to see this card we found on Charlie Ruck? It's got your name and address on it." Guy read the card, though he didn't need to. He had recognized it. He had given it to Danilo in the Black Spot when arranging for the "wasting" of Rachel Lingard: "Short, round-faced, fat, glasses, dark hair scraped back, about 27..." "I can explain this," he began, and then he understood that he couldn't. He had forgotten, but now he remembered, that one of them had mentioned how Janice and her husband would be staying in Portland Road. Perhaps it was Leonora who had mentioned it. Always he could remember when Leonora told him something, but he couldn't now and knowing this, he felt a bitter pang. The two policemen were watching him. "Come 'long then, Curran," Shaw said. The "Mr." had been dropped. That was the beginning. He called out bravely to Celeste, "See you later." "I doubt it," said Linus. They went out into the mews. One of Guy's neighbours gave them an indifferent glance. Guy got into the car and they took him away.

The End