Disordered Minds

*6*

There was no sign of George when Jonathan followed her downstairs five minutes later, but her Mini was still parked where she'd left it in the yard, with a wire trailing from a battery charger under the hood to a plug inside the kitchen. The sleet had turned to rain and he stood irresolutely by the back door, wondering what to do. Leave? Seek her out to apologize? If so, what for? He didn't understand the accusation of abuse at all. He'd taken Roy's slights, even accepted his apology with the best grace he could muster. What more could he have done? He certainly hadn't inflicted his color on George over lunch.

Nevertheless, he'd clearly said something to make her angry, although he had no idea what it was. It certainly wasn't his reference to her writing the book, because she'd made up her mind by then. Nor had he challenged any of her theories-which was the reason his colleagues usually took umbrage. Perhaps she'd been offended that the flaring pain in his gut had prevented him eating Trent's lard-filled hotpot? His natural inclination was to pin her down and argue the logic of her position. If she wanted publicity for Howard, then whether she liked Jonathan or not was immaterial as long as he was able to generate it. But hers had been an emotional response and he didn't think she'd appreciate a lesson in logic.

The sound of rising voices came from the kitchen. "...sake, woman. Keep the volume down," said Roy firmly. "You'll have Jim quoting you all over the shop if you're not careful."

"What does it matter if he does?"

"You'll be done for slander."

"I couldn't give a damn. He's not even very bright, Roy, just a miserable little hick who's taught himself to speak properly. I don't believe a word he says. I'll eat my bloody hat if he ever went to Oxford-a polytechnic more like. God knows how he got a doctorate."

"Jesus! Will you calm down, girl!"

"Why should I? He never once asked if I had any qualifications, just wrote me off as a postman's daughter. You should have seen his reaction when I told him what Dad did, he couldn't put enough distance between us."

"What makes you think he's a hick? He sounds like a right ponce to me."

"Only because you've never lived in London. You can take the man out of the city, Roy, but you can never take the city out of the man. I should know, I was born and brought up in the blasted place. His accent's all over the shop. He's a fake, a bloody little con man who'd rather exploit other people than do the work himself. He's not interested in justice, he just wants to make money. I'm so angry, Roy."

"Disappointed, more like." There was the sound of chair legs scraping across the floor. "Buck up, girl. There'll be others. Like you say, it took fifty years before Derek Bentley got his pardon."

"But I haven't got fifty years, Roy."

"Then you'll have to prove the doctors wrong, darlin'. Stay put. I'll get rid of him, then I'll take a look at your battery. It's had over an hour so it ought to be charged."

There was a click as a door swung open, and Jonathan turned toward it, his face unusually apprehensive. The pain in his abdomen was like an acid burn eating through his stomach wall, and he wished to God he'd brought some indigestion tablets with him. He swallowed bile, blaming the hotpot for his problems, and Roy grinned, seeing only discomfort at George's trashing of his character.

"You're all right, mate," he said, closing the kitchen door behind him. "I'm not going to bite you. It's pissing with rain, so I came to find out if you want a taxi to the station. If I ring now, it'll take ten minutes or thereabouts. You can wait in the bar or hop back upstairs." His grin broadened. "You're safe as long as I keep George in the kitchen."

Jonathan made a feeble attempt to regain the moral high ground. "I don't know what I did to upset her."

"Then you'll have something to puzzle over on the train ride home. So ... shall I call a taxi or would you rather walk?"

"Why did she write to me if she wasn't willing to pool information?"

"Because she's been trying for years to get someone interested. She was pleased as punch when she heard you on the radio. Thought you were the guy to get things moving."

"I am."

"George doesn't think so. As far as she's concerned, you're just after the credit. Howard can go hang himself-excuse the pun-if you can make money out of it. That's not George's way. Never has been."

"I'm happy to acknowledge her input. I'll pay her a percentage of the royalties if her information leads to something."

Roy shook his head. "You really don't get it, do you? She spent half an hour apologizing for my big mouth, then she realized you're more of a bigot than I am. For the record, she has two Open University degrees-one in psychology and one in criminology-also an external Ph.D. from Sussex in behavioral science." The amusement returned to his voice. "You shouldn't make assumptions, mate. George is far too modest to call herself a doctor-unlike you-but she's just as entitled. The difference is, she earned her qualifications the hard way: in the evenings while she held down a full-time job. You got yours the easy way-free-paid for by the likes of George. That's where being the token black pays dividends."

"You're wrong," said Jonathan flatly.

"Not according to George. You shouldn't look down your nose at people, mate, not if you want their cooperation. She's a good old girl, she'll bust a gut for anyone, but she doesn't like bullies, she doesn't like people who take advantage and she doesn't like snobs." He pointed a thumb at the floor. "And you're all three. Now ... do you wanna taxi or do you wanna walk?"

It was the accusation of bullying that gave Jonathan most pause for thought as he retraced his steps along Highdown Road. Anger had always simmered behind his insecurity, erupting sometimes in uncontrollable tantrums against his mother and his demented grandfather, but he had never thought of himself as a bully. That was a title he reserved for his father, whose frustration could explode into violence with terrifying speed. There had been no joy in Clarence Hughes's life, merely a daily grind of menial toil for the local council that had stultified his intellect and driven him to rage against the only people who were safe-his family.

From early childhood Jonathan had understood what fueled his father's resentment even though he hated him for it. Clarence had wanted to amount to something in life, but immigration to Britain-far from offering him the opportunity to shine-had been a soul-destroying move. He wasn't a stupid man, but his heavily accented English, and his lack of recognized qualifications, had closed the door to jobs that would have given him status. Instead, he labored at menial tasks and hid his contempt for the people he worked with. The victims of so much repressed emotion were his family, in particular his only child, on whom all hopes of a better future were placed.

Such weighty expectations had taught Jonathan to compartmentalize his life early, hiding his secrets as fearfully as a thief. To his mother, he was a popular boy whose late returns from school were due to visits to friends. To his father, he was an intelligent, hard-working student who stayed on after hours to work in the school library. To his teachers, he was the son of an Indian lawyer and Ugandan doctor who'd been expelled by Idi Amin in the 1970s and had their wealth confiscated. To his bullies, he was invisible.

The truth-that he'd hidden in the school lavatories because he was too frightened to walk home, and had invented a background for his parents because he was ashamed of them-became obscured even in his own mind. It was easier to embroider fantasies of popularity and forced exile than to question his own timidity and his yearning to be respected. He'd even grown comfortable in the role of victim, gaining strength from it by logging each new slight on his tally stick of revenge.

At what point he decided to convert fantasy to fact, he didn't know. When he gained the place at Oxford? When he started aping the long vowels and clear diction of the upper middle class? When he realized that an appearance of wealth was almost as valuable as wealth itself? Or that the myth of good breeding was easily established by the simple expedient of cutting his family out of his life? Perhaps there was no defining moment, perhaps his descent into pathological deceit had been so gradual that no lie had ever seemed shocking enough to call a halt.

"Why do you push people away? Are you afraid, they're going to see your flaws? What's the big deal, anyway? No one's , perfect..."

He read the new placard outside the newsagent as he passed: "U.S. accused of bully-boy diplomacy." The pedant in him questioned the juxtaposition of "bully-boy" and "diplomacy." The two were irreconcilable ... or should be. The one suggested brute ignorance, the other deft intelligence, though in a phoney war the rattling saber was a powerful propaganda tool for friend and foe alike.

Jonathan couldn't count the number of times his father had wept for the man he had become, but it hadn't changed his behavior. Fear of his heavy hand-a more potent weapon than the hand itself-had been the dominant discipline in both his marriage and his only child's upbringing. The injustice had been Jonathan's demented grandfather's regularly mistaking his growing grandson for his hated son-in-law. With a courage he'd never possessed, even in his prime, the old man had belabored the adolescent for the sins of the father while his mother held her finger to her lips and begged him with her eyes to let her Abba vent his spleen. "It's good medicine," she would say. "Now he'll sleep."

As he trudged on, contempt for his mother wound like a snake about Jonathan's heart. She was an ill-educated peasant who had fawned over her idiot father and paid lip service to her responsibilities to her son. What can I do? I'm just a woman. Clarence won't allow it ... Clarence will lose his temper ... Clarence has problems ... Clarence will hit me ... Clarence ... Clarence ... Clarence...

"Women make you so angry, Jon ... one day you'll cross the line and you won't know you've done it until it's too late..."

Trains came and went at Branksome Station, but Jonathan felt too ill to take any notice. He stood under cover, leaning against a wall, loose-limbed and swaying slightly, clutching his briefcase to his midriff and staring into the middle distance. As they left, several passengers reported an Arab-looking man, sweating profusely and behaving strangely. The acting station master assessed him carefully through a window and wondered what to do. He couldn't imagine that a suicide bomber would choose Branksome Station as a target, but he reminded himself that Palestinian bombers blew themselves up on buses; trains were just a different mode of transport. He was about to call the transport police when another passenger, a woman, approached the man and shook him by the hand.

"Are you all right?" the dark-haired woman asked Jonathan kindly as she reached for his right hand and clasped it warmly. She wore an expensive overcoat with the collar turned up and a cashmere scarf looped around her neck, obscuring the lower part of her face. "You look as if you're about to fall over. Do you want some help?"

He glanced at her briefly, then reverted to staring across the track. Nausea threatened every time he moved his eyes. He'd persuaded himself it was weeks of sleepless nights followed by jet lag. It would pass, he'd been telling himself for nearly an hour. Everything passed eventually. But the gnawing pain in his stomach said it was something worse.

The woman moved in front of him. "You need to talk to me," she encouraged him. "There are two policemen watching you." She was pretty in a manufactured way-most of it was paint-but she looked genuinely concerned. Jonathan, who had seen die way everyone else had been giving him a wide berth, wondered why she was bothering with him.

Policemen...? He wedged his back more firmly against the wall. "I'm all right," he managed.

She laughed and touched a gloved hand to his arm as if she were greeting an old friend. "You need to smile and play up a bit," she said. "They're very suspicious of you." She tilted her head toward the platform entrance. "They're behind the wall over there and they're afraid there's a bomb in your briefcase."

A bomb...? The absurdity of the concept struck Jonathan forcibly even as he felt something give way inside his head-the first of the retaining walls that held his emotions in check. There was nothing in his briefcase except his wallet, letters about Howard Stamp, his ticket to the Royal Opera House and his passport. If a single lie unraveled... "Why would they think that?"

"You're black," she said bluntly, "you're sweating like a pig and you look shit-scared. It doesn't take much these days to get the cops excited."

Another wall collapsed. Why did everyone keep calling him black? Why did everyone keep likening him to a pig? Hysteria rocketed round his gut, searching for an exit, before converting into painful tears behind his eyes. He was scared and sweating because he didn't know what was happening to him. He tried to bolster the myth of jet lag. No one this tired could take the funeral of a murdered boy, anti-Arab bigotry, hostile immigration officers, tanks, soldiers, critical spinsters, dirty landlords ... war ... without suffering an emotional backlash. But he knew it wasn't true. The truth was that his fabricated personality was disintegrating in front of a total stranger because someone at last was showing him a little kindness.

The woman moved closer and he caught a waft of her scent. "I guess you've had too much to drink, but if you don't want the cops poking their noses in, then talk to me, pretend we know each other ... even better, give me your briefcase." She held out a hand. "That's what's got them twitched. They'll go away if you let me open it."

He handed it to her, suddenly dizzy. "I'm not drunk."

"You're giving a damn good impression." She rested the case on her knee and flicked the latches, pulling the leather flap open so any watcher could see. Her scurrying fingers rummaged through the letters before she took them all out and handed them to him. "Look at me," she told him. "Make out we've met on purpose. Select something and give it to me."

He steeled himself to look down, quelling the sickness that rose in his throat. "Who are you?"

"It doesn't matter. Just give me a piece of paper. Good." She took the page and scanned it. "Talk to me. Say rhubarb if you want, but at least give the impression that we're having a conversation."

How did she know the police thought he had a bomb in his briefcase? "Rhubarb?"

"Again."

"Rhubarb ... rhubarb ... rhubarb."

She pointed to something in the letter and nicked him a smile. "Now laugh. People who laugh don't blow up trains."

"I don't want to blow up a train. I'm a British academic. My passport's in the case. All I have to do is show it to them."

"They'll still question you. Everyone's been reporting a mad-looking Arab on the platform. I slipped round the back; otherwise they wouldn't have let me through."

"Why aren't you afraid?"

"I know who you are. I saw you at the Crown and Feathers."

Jonathan groped through his memory. There had been a couple in the bar, he recalled, but he didn't think the woman had been this one. "I don't remember you."

She stuffed the letters into the briefcase and tucked it under one arm. "It's a big place," she said cryptically, glancing toward the platform entrance. "You're all right now, I think. They seem to have gone. Come on, there's a seat down here." She put her other hand under his elbow and urged him along the platform. "You'll feel better if you sit down. You're so wet already, a little more water on your bum won't matter." She lowered him to the metal bench and sat beside him. "Did Roy say something to upset you? He can be a right jerk at times."

Jonathan leaned back to stare at the sky and felt the nausea begin to subside. The rain had eased off and a weak sun had broken through the clouds although it was still very cold. Her scent, an attractive one, filled his nostrils, and, for the first time in months, he found the closeness of a woman comforting. He couldn't account for it, nor did he bother to try, he was just grateful for the human contact. "Is he a friend of yours?"

"Not really. I know his ex-wife, so I get to hear about his faults. He's famous for opening mouth before engaging brain. Did he say something insulting?"

"That's where being tke token black pays dividends..." Was the truth ever an insult? Perversely, Jonathan found himself defending the man. "If he did, it probably wasn't intentional."

"I wouldn't bet on it," she said with an easy laugh. "He may not be the brightest thing on two legs but he knows how to get under people's skin. You don't want to dwell on it. It gives him a buzz if he thinks one of his jibes has hit the spot."

Despite her expensive clothes, he didn't think she'd been born to wealth. Her voice had a rough Dorset burr, much like Roy Trent's. "Does he do it to you?"

"He does it to everyone. That's why he has so few customers."

It was a different explanation from George's, but it appealed to Jonathan rather more. "Do you know Councillor Gardener?"

"Roy's girlfriend? Only by sight." She turned to look at him. "Don't tell me she upset you? She got religion after the cancer-wants the world to accept Jesus and all that cr-" She broke off. "I'm being a bitch. Forget I said that. She's very well-meaning ... crusades for the poor. I can't believe she'd say anything unkind."

Fleetingly, Jonathan wondered why she was so intent on blaming someone else for his problems. "It's just exhaustion," he said. "I flew in from the States last night and didn't sleep. I'd have done better to stay at home."

"Was the trip worth the effort?"

"To the States?"

"No ... today's ... down here."

He shook his head.

"Will you come back?"

He glanced at her. The question wasn't overly intrusive, but somewhere in the recesses of his mind her persistence struck a suspicious chord. "Did Roy send you after me?"

"Hardly," she said with a small laugh. "He'll have forgotten all about you by now." She nestled her chin into her scarf. "To be honest, I was surprised to find you here. You left the pub a long time before I did. So ... are you feeling better?"

"I am, yes." He was surprised. The nausea had gone, and even the tremors in his arms had ceased. "You've been very kind."

"I'm in a charitable mood." She looked along the track. "Your train's coming. I'll see you onto it, then all you have to do is make the connection at Bournemouth Central. Can you manage that?"

He pushed himself to the edge of the seat. "What about you?"

"I'm going the other way," she said, standing up and offering him his briefcase as the train drew in. She'd re-locked it at some point, and he took it gratefully.

"Then why are you on this platform?"

"I could see you were in trouble."

He shook his head. "I don't even know who you are."

"A good Samaritan," was all she said, as she opened a carriage door and urged him inside.

His last view of her was muffled in her scarf with a gloved hand raised in farewell but, as he waved back, it occurred to him that he wouldn't recognize her again. All he had seen was a pair of painted eyes beneath a dark fringe. It wasn't important until he opened his briefcase at Bournemouth Central and discovered that she'd stolen everything that mattered to him. She'd taken his wallet, his train ticket, his opera ticket, and worst of all she'd left him with nothing to prove who he was. His passport was gone.

After that he lost it. He ran about the station, barging into people and shouting at them. Some thought he was a pathetic lunatic. Some thought he was dangerous. When two transport policemen tackled him to the ground, he called them fascist scum and struck at them with the briefcase until one of them wrenched it from his grasp and kneed him in the gut.