Paid and Loving Eyes

CHAPTER EIGHT

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That evening was straight out of Casbah, me staring soulfully through candleglim at the beautiful Almira, who smiled mistily and whispered sweet everythings. The Barlfen Rest turned out to be the nook to end all nooks. No diner could see any other diner unless she was at his table. It was like a rabbit warren. You wended among ferns and carved ornate screens. Clever old Almira, to suggest—well, insist on —this place.

“Lovejoy, darling.” Almira was all for cottage work again. “It’s time to go.”

I’d had her pudding, disappointingly non-filling sorbet stuff. She’d seemed to expect me to eat it, the way women do. “Wait, doowerlink. Please.” I pretended to temporize, slipped in an order for profiteroles. “I have something to say.”

“Yes, darling?” Women love appetites in action. Almira was happy to see me nosh. I waited for the discreet serf to retire. It took longer than I wanted, because I’d had to wrestle the waitress to the best of three pinfalls for enough cream.

“Our holiday,” I said. I wanted to appear soulful, but you can’t when scoffing your third pudding, so I let instinct guide me along. “France. Next Friday. Can you get away?”

“France?”

She went faint. Her hand crept to her lovely throat. She was wearing genuine amber—orange-coloured, not Chinese red, no trace of that ugly sectoring that gives amberoid mock-ups away in oblique light. Lovely thick complete beads, matching near as amber ever can. Low-cut, her swan neck without a blemish. No wonder women rule.

“I checked. There’s another flight next Thursday. I paid a deposit.” I looked proud.

“But Lovejoy…”

“I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

“You what?” Now pale as well as faint, her voice going.

“Don’t worry. I’ve made the arrangements through a travel agent near St Edmundsbury. Your husband will never trace it.”

“Oh, darling,” she said, frantic. “I couldn’t possibly come, not to…”

Not to France? I thought, but did not say. I watched her scrabble out of the pit I’d dug.

“It’s the… the competitions, Lovejoy,” she said with bright invention. “I’m training three showjumpers for the point-to-point. I’m so sorry, darling. You’re so sweet to think of it. I must recompense you for all the cost you have put into the idea, darling.”

“That’s kind, love.” I eyed her. I was really narked. What if I really had paid a holiday deposit? “Promise me you’ll come some other time. How about Greece?”

She reached across the table and squeezed my hand, eyes glowing with unbridled love or something. She almost collapsed from relief. “I promise, darling. Greece sounds lovely.” If I’d said Greece first we’d already be on the Great White Bird. “Anything you want, Lovejoy,” she offered, gay now the threat of France was all done.

“Doowerlink,” I said mistily.

Anything, but keep off Troude’s properties at Ladyham and Mentle where Baff got killed by louts, and book for anywhere but France? I was suddenly out of my depth. I told her to settle the bill because I was in a hurry. She obeyed with suppressed excitement, and we scurried from Barlfen with unseemly alacrity to make savage passionate smiles at my cottage.

She was sound asleep when I eventually rose and stole away with all the stealth of a fairground. I cranked the Ruby into life, and had it clattering resentfully through the drizzle towards London in minutes. I’d hidden the matches, so even if Almira heard me she’d have had a hell of a time lighting a candle to get dressed and catch me up.

Four o’clock in the morning, I was chugging down Highgate Hill when the Ruby croaked to a standstill next to the stone marking where young Dick Whittington had paused with his cat on his dispirited retreat from London and heard the bells chiming out promises of Lord Mayorality and fortune. I paused to listen. Only the tap of the rain on the wheezing Ruby’s bonnet. It looked fit for Casualty. I went in to find the nearest unvandalized phone box. Enquiries gave me Jan’s newspaper number. With a lot of shinannikins I got somebody on a night desk and explained I was Jan Fotheringay’s doctor with urgent news for the next of kin. They had a conference of some sort, reluctantly gave me a number in Tooting Bec. I rang.

“Hello,” I said sternly to the sleepy but harassed bird who answered. “This is the Whittington Hospital. I’m Dr, ah, Pasteur. Some confusion has arisen about Jan Fotheringay’s, ah, designation status.”

“Yes, Doctor. This is Lysette, his next of kin,” she said breathlessly. “I knew there would be trouble. It’s this dual nationality, isn’t it? He was born in Switzerland, but has lived here all his life. The tax returns are in such a mess from it.” A sudden switch as she realized the hour. “He’s still in a stable condition, isn’t he?”

“Well, his condition is…” I crackled and hissed like a failing phone. We in East Anglia know the sounds only too well.

Armed now, I entered the Whittington Hospital and asked to see the night sister. I was Jan Fotheringay’s long-lost estranged brother who’d just heard the bad news.

“Hello, Sister,” I said, going all desperation when they found her for me. “I can’t thank you enough for looking after my brother, Jan. Lysette in Tooting Bec says he’s had a terrible accident. Can I see him, please? Our poor old mother does pine so…”

“It’s just as well you came, Mr Fotheringay,” the night sister said sadly. “A terrible accident. You can see him. But you must fill in this form. Name and address, please,”

I complied, narked. I mean, I’m basically honest, so why all this malarkey? Women ought to realize they have an obligation to trust me, but they never do.

The ward was long and thin with dismal green walls. Patients snored, rumbled, twitched, groaned. Gruesome machines did their blinks, wheezes, clanks. The hospital reverberated to clicks and clashes, the whole nocturnal symphony of dins combining to make healthy innocents shudder. If they don’t use ether any more, why does its perfume linger?

Jan was unrecognizable. He lay on a bed that seemed a complex tangle of tubing in a plastic bubble. The bubble itself was tubed up like an astronaut. Jan was riddled. Even his tubes had tubes, fluid dripping in and fluids dripping out. Shiny metal cylinders squeezed and relaxed. Monitor screens bleeped and blooped. Dials showed numbers. Mad dots chased other mad dots across green glowing oscilloscopes, I felt ill.

The nurse caught my arm, helped me to a chair.

“I understand, Charles,” she said quietly. “Seeing your brother like this is bound to be a shock. Put your head between your knees. I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”

Silly bitch thought I was queasy. Ridiculous, because I’m not the sort to go giddy seeing somebody who’s poorly. My vision returned slowly. My clammy hands eventually stopped shaking. Sweat dripped down my chin on to the floor. God, but hospitals have a lot to answer for. It took me half an hour to feel myself again, and even then the sight of Jan was enough to make me emigrate.

“Can I speak to him, Nurse?”

“Yes. But you won’t go too near.”

She retired back to her illuminated desk, a pool of light in a sanctuary straight out of Goya, head bent beside the lamp, all else in darkness.

My head was bent too. “Jan?” I said to the plastic sheeting. My breath condensed on it. “It’s me. Lovejoy.”

The figure didn’t move. You could see bits of his features, mottled and scaly like a fish gone bad. Couldn’t they cover his burnt bits up, for God’s sake? He seemed to be lying uncomfortably, and not on proper bedclothes either. Didn’t they give sick folk a proper mattress? Hell flaming fire.

“Anything you want me to do, Jan?”

“I haven’t got a brother.”

Barely audible. I found myself looking about guiltily, but the night nurse wasn’t in earshot. “I lied. They wouldn’t have let me in otherwise.”

An arm moved—well, some place the limb should have been shifted slowly. Tubes trailed with it.

I said, a bit apologetically, “Stop frigging me about with this Jan the Critic gunge. You’re from Tooting Bec.”

“How did you find out?” No laughter, but I felt he’d be amused if they lifted the hospital off him.

“I phoned the newspaper. Said I was your doctor. They told me your address. I phoned the girl there. Lysette, isn’t it?”

Astonishingly, I saw an eye open to hold me in its gaze. Not such a nerk after all, lying here with that alert bright orb steady on me.

“Why’re you digging, Lovejoy?”

This was the hard part. I hesitated. “I have to know what happened after they took you out of the barn that night down in the harbour.”

Silence. No feeling of a would-be smile now. More like would-be fright.

“Listen, Jan. I’ll guess. You just tell me if I go wrong.” I licked my lips, planning ahead. “The hoods threatened you. You got scared, decided to make a run for it. You commissioned Steve Yelbard as a decoy, didn’t show. You got your motorized caravan, and heading through Archway had an unexpected accident—”

“Accident.” The limb moved.

“Was it Corse’s men?”

“Not even a crash.” He sounded so tired. “They made me watch while they burned it. They threw me in the door. I heard them laughing. I hit my head and couldn’t move. It was all afire. Some passing football supporters pulled me out, the nurse told me.”

“I’m scareder than you, Jan. I’ll say nowt, and do less.” But I’d had to know. I mean, I’ve worked for Big John Sheehan quite a few times. “Was it Corse, or Sheehan’s lot?”

“Neither. They set me running, Lovejoy, but they wouldn’t care where I went.”

Odd. “Where were you going?”

“Back to Geneva. I thought I’d be…”

“That’s enough, Charles,” the night nurse said, quietly interposing. She looked ready to deal with a million tubes in a million horrid ways. I’d learned enough. I thought.

“So long, Jan. Keep going, eh?”

“Lovejoy.” I bent my head to hear the whisper in spite of the nurse’s tutting. “My address, my —”

“Safe with me, Jan. Cheers.”

On the way out, I almost bumped into a bonny dark-haired girl. She was hurrying towards the ward from the lift’s cacophony of clashing doors. She didn’t spare me a glance, just hurried on past. Lysette? I’d bet a quid.

Sometimes, I wonder if everybody doesn’t go through life desperately trying to avoid being seen. It’s as if we’ve all committed a murder, and have a nagging terror we might get spotted. Oh, I know we go about pretending the opposite, wearing fashionable clothes, sprucing ourselves up to catch the eye. But that’s only surface ripples. Deep down, we strive for anonymity. At least, some do. Like me. I’m a chameleon in search of a colour against which to stand and vanish.

Especially to Cissie.

Lovejoy, her note said, as if I hadn’t enough to do. Come immediately. It’s urgent. I shall be in until eleven. No signature. I knew who.

Yonks since, I mentioned a wife I once had. Cissie’d become a half-remembered dream. I couldn’t even recall her face, not that I’d tried. Like a pillock I drove obediently through Lavenham, wondering why the hell I was bothering. Marriage isn’t what folk say it is. Bonding’s pretty loose stuff, and marriage knots aren’t. In the first place, it’s hard to find any spouse who behaves as if morality’s there in strength. Second, married couples never agree on what marriage actually is. For me, I simply hadn’t understood that getting married to Cissie did not constitute a proper introduction. Mind you, who can fathom birds? Why, for instance, was the Marquis de Sade’s missus Renée unswervingly faithful to him all the years he was in the Bastille, only to leave him the minute he got sprung? You tell me.

Their house is enormous. I’d only ever been there once before, to deliver her share of the belongings. She’d banished me, her belongings and all, threatened me with the police if I ever showed again. I’d been delighted to comply.

“My usual Tuesday visit, Katta,” I said to the maid.

She emitted a brief tubular screech, her signal of humour. A vast emporium of a maid, is Katta. She never stops spreading across your field of view. She’s been with Paul—more about him in a sec—since he went to school on the Continent. Probably rescued her from Castle Perilous, and kept her on ever since.

“Oh, you!” she gave back, wittily. It’s all she’s ever said to me. It comes out. O keeyoo.

“Announce Lovejoy, Katta, if you will.”

She rolled ahead like a billowing cloud fast-forwarded in a nature film. You have to admire a bird who grapples anorexia to a frazzle.

“This way, Lovejoy,” said Cissie, walking sternly between us, not glancing at me. I was deflected into a drawing room where Paul stood, trying his distinguished best to seem in command. It was doomed to fail within five furlongs of Cissie.

She walked sternly to the fireplace and swivelled sternly. (If any spaces happen in the next few sentences, insert sternly; it’ll save endless effort on my part. Cissie is stern personified.) Blondish, exactly the right height-to-weight Quartel Index from working at her figure in pools and leotards, exactly the right height, clothes, teeth, attitude. She’s the most depressing example of perfection that ever crippled a bloke. Imagine a gorgeous death ray, you’re close.

“Lovejoy,” she snapped, “you have to help Paulie.”

“Why’d you not invite me to your wedding?”

Note the absence of greetings, won’t-you-sit-down. What the hell was I doing here? I make me exasperated. I mean, I’d had two whole months of being wed to her Churchillian imperatives, enough to last several reincarnations, and here I was reflexly coming back for more. I’m beyond belief. I honestly get me wild.

Paul is a posh lawyer, investor. City gent. He looks the part. I say that with all the derogatory effect I can muster. It’s all Paul ever does, look the part. I think he’s just a suit. Occasionally, like now, he can seem really lifelike when despair shows through, but he’s still only a Madame Tussaud replicate escaped from gene control.

“In trouble, Paulie?” I kept pretty meek at this stage, because I can fly off the handle.

“You must do as Philippe Troude says,” from Cissie.

“In trouble, Paulie?” Me, still meek.

“I said you must work for Philippe,” from between Cissie’s perfect teeth.

“In trouble, Paulie?” Still meek, still on that old handle.

She swung on him in fury. “I told you he’d be insufferable!” she honed out. There’s no other word for her speech. It’s a whine, a mosquito in your earhole at night that wakes you up flailing air, or a distant forester with a band-saw in the woods of an autumn. But the word doesn’t work for Cissie. She never, never ever, whines. She shrills, screams, shrieks, thunders, but never whines. Honing, that scrape you get from metal on a honing stone, is the best words can manage.

“I. T. comma P.?” I said, so affable.

“Listen to me,” she honed. I stepped back. The band-saw had moved closer, and forests give absolutely no protection from the likes of her. “Paulie has invested a great deal—a very great deal!—in Monsieur Troude’s enterprise. He’s not going to suffer on account of a worm like you, Lovejoy!”

Like at The Hague and the UN, her arguments always plead her own case in the guise of philanthropy. I listened with a sudden glim of interest. Why me?

“Why me, Paulie?” Still a meek handle-hanger.

“Tell him!”

Half the trouble was, I’ve only to see a couple and my treacherous mind starts asking absurd questions. Like, how do they make love? Does he ever ravish her over the breadboard? Or in the garage unloading shopping? What do they say during grunts of passion? Have they ever wept in prayer? What charities do they support? Does he squeeze his blackheads? Hers? If so, what does he do with the end-product? Is he a mattress-wiper, or a surreptitious flirter of the rolled-up…?

“Lovejoy! Pay attention!” honed in my ear. I honestly swiped at an imaginary mosquito. Paulie had been droning for ages. What with Paulie droning and her honing, they were a concerto of sound Schonberg would have envied with his mere twelve tones. Tone, hone, drone. I stood there, an imbecile amid exhortations.

“… investment opportunities balanced against shortfall fiscal inputs retrograded leverage-wise…” he was saying. (I’m making this up; I haven’t a clue what actual words he was using. Like I said, an investment lawyer. You get the idea.)

“… cullage from antiques reinvested across the board,” he said. And stopped.

“And?” I prompted. He’d got to the only word I could understand, antiques.

“And what?” he asked. He even managed to drone that.

“What do you want me to do?” This is so typical, rich people greedy to be richer. If you want to become rich, don’t invest everything, and don’t spend virtually nothing. Simply buy a good, rareish antique. That’ll do the job. You want to know how? Right, a tip: Knocking around this old kingdom of ours are some thirty white-enamel-face long-case (so-called “grandfather”) clocks, with the most unusual dusty pinkish floral decoration on the dial. Birds, vines, leaves, the odd tendril, all painted so very slenderly. Simply go and buy one, average market price. What a rotten tip! you exclaim angrily, because the average long-caser is a whole month’s wages—expensive, no? Answer, no. Because that delicate manganese decoration signifies a value ten times that of the average grampa clock. See? Instead, prats like this Paul-Cissie molecule want to be moguls overnight. Hence the contumely.

He looked pleadingly at Cissie. She glared. “Lovejoy knows all the time, Paulie. He’s just being aggravating.” She made me sound like a tooth abscess.

“Words of one syllable, please.”

“Help Philippe to identify certain genuine antiques overseas, Lovejoy. So he can reimport them here, for auction on the international market. Otherwise the profit vanishes.”

She paused, to my relief. I felt like I”d got clogged ears from swimming underwater. You know how your hearing goes thick after being in the plunge for an hour?

“The percentage return is —”

“Paulie!” from honer to droner. He fell silent. Very, very wise of him. Disobedience was not tolerated in her ranks.

“Why aren”t the antiques being auctioned off on the Continent?” I should have asked Troude that.

“Lovejoy!”

Exasperation’s not much of a response, is it, but it’s sometimes all you can get from marriage. Escapers know that.

“Can’t be done for the price,” I said blithely, but still with a dollop of that good old meekness.

“What kind of financial package are you —” droned Paulie.

“Shut up!” from not-tell-you-again Cissie. “He means he doesn’t want to, Paulie.” She rounded on me. “You know Paulie’s invested our life savings in the scheme, Lovejoy.”

Everything polarized. What some folk’d do without the first person singular, God alone knows. Cissie’s policy is, third person equals abuse; first equals the cause of righteousness. I thought, blimey. Then got intrigued, because I couldn”t remember ever having thought that Cockney expletive before. Blimey, from the old English curse, blind me if I lie. Why blimey now? I”m no Cockney. Some trigger had set me off.

“Shake him, Paulie!” she was honing.

“Do if you dare, Paulie,” I said evenly. “I didn”t come up the Stour on a bicycle.”

He lowered his hands. I felt sorry for him. He should have got out while he was still alive.

“You have to, Lovejoy,” he said. “Please.”

How desperate it had all suddenly become. I was intrigued. I mean, for Cissie even to summon me to her presence was a step of grimsome magnitude. What an interesting scheme Troude’s was. Maybe the way to obtain more facts was to play hard to get?

“No, ta.” A little unmeekness had crept in after all, which only goes to show you can’t depend on practically everything. “See you. May you live for ever.”

It’s the Chinese backhanded compliment. I chatted all the way to the front door with Katta. She did her soaring yell of a laugh and said, “O keeyooo!” I liked her. She’s the only one talks right in that house.

The Ruby for once sparked at the first crank, and was off the starting grid like a racer. It was glad to be out of it.