A Dead Man Out of Mind (38 page)

Gabriel looked intrigued. ‘What on earth are you getting at?'

Again David laughed. ‘SE,' he said succinctly. ‘The diary said SE on that last evening of his life. It meant Stanley Everitt, of course – he had planned to see him, to confront him with the discrepancies in the registers. Everitt always spent Fridays at St Margaret's, apparently. But – fool that I was – I just assumed that it meant Solemn Evensong!'

‘Solemn Evensong – on a Friday evening in Advent?' Gabriel's laugh was rich and genuine. ‘You must be joking! David, you do disappoint me!'

David shared in the general laughter at his own expense, knowing that he deserved it. But one voice that should have been the first to condemn his folly was strangely silent. He looked towards the chair which Ruth had appropriated – the most comfortable in the room, by virtue of her great ordeal. The girl's head had fallen to one side, her mouth was slightly open, and her eyes were closed. In sleep she looked peaceful, almost angelic, her red hair forming a halo around her serene face. Appearances can be deceiving, David said to himself.

CHAPTER 30

    
For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red: it is full mixed, and he poureth out of the same.

    
As for the dregs thereof: all the ungodly of the earth shall drink them, and suck them out.

Psalm 75.9–10

‘Well, I suppose this is it.' They were all thinking it, but it was Ruth who spoke the words as they stood on the platform at Euston Station. It hardly seemed possible, reflected David, that it had only been three weeks since the three of them had come together in this spot. Three of the longest weeks of his life – just as he had predicted that first night, he thought with a wry smile.

The train to Northampton would be leaving in just a few minutes. Ruth had allowed David to carry her case – now even heavier than it had been three weeks ago, with the addition of her Covent Garden purchases – and to heft it on to the train for her. Now it only remained to say goodbye.

Ruth stood squarely in front of David and thrust her hand out. ‘Thank you for helping me with my work experience,' she said formally, almost as if on remembered instructions from her parents. ‘And for everything else, too,' she added with a near-smile.

He took her hand and shook it. ‘Have a safe journey.'

Lucy held out her arms to her niece; the girl went into them and hugged her aunt with an affection that even she couldn't hide. And she whispered something in her ear that made Lucy smile.

Then she clambered on to the train. Her face appeared by the window for a last wave and a moment later the train pulled out.

They stood for a moment as it receded into the distance. ‘The poor kid,' said Lucy on a sigh.

‘What do you mean, poor kid? Her parents are the ones to feel sorry for now, getting her back.'

Lucy shook her head. ‘The other day when we had lunch together, she told me that her parents are having real problems with their marriage. That's why they packed her off here, instead of arranging for her to do her work experience in Northampton. She said that they row all the time, that life at home is pretty grim. It's no wonder she's mixed up, David. Being fourteen is quite bad enough without having to deal with hell at home.'

‘Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe
she's
the reason
they're
having problems.'

‘Give the kid a break, David.' Lucy smiled. ‘Don't you want to know what she whispered before she left?'

‘I wait with bated breath.'

‘She said that you're not too bad.'

‘High praise indeed from the
enfant terrible
.' But he was touched in spite of himself. ‘Just do me a favour,' he added.

‘What's that?'

‘If I ever suggest, in a moment of insanity, that we should have a child, just say “Ruth” to me. Or better yet, put a bullet through my head and put me out of my misery.'

Laughing, Lucy turned to him and put both hands over her abdomen. ‘David,' she said, ‘I'm afraid I have something to tell you.' For an instant she watched the welter of conflicting emotions struggling for supremacy on his face before she relented. ‘Only joking, darling.'

David clutched his heart and gasped. ‘Don't ever do that to me again.'

They walked back down the platform and into the station. ‘Should we have coffee?' Lucy suggested, indicating the station café.

‘Here? Surely we can do better than Travellers' Fare, love. Why don't we just go home?'

She turned her head away. ‘There's something I need to say to you, and I'd rather do it here, on neutral territory.'

David had no presentiment of approaching disaster; he was merely puzzled. ‘All right,' he agreed.

They went in and ordered coffee; it came in polystyrene cups, and they drank it sitting on red plastic chairs.

‘So what did you want to say?' David prompted her.

Lucy took a deep breath. ‘Something came in the post for you this morning. I opened it by mistake.'

‘And what was it?' he grinned. ‘Something terrible out of my past that's finally caught up with me?'

‘Well, in a way it was. It was about Lady Constance's house. The will has been proved, and you can take possession at the beginning of April.' She added, ‘The letter said that they'd sent some correspondence to you at the office but you hadn't replied, so they were writing to you at your home address instead.'

So the evil moment had come. ‘Well?' he said cautiously. ‘Does it have to make any difference?'

‘I think that you should move into the house.' Lucy spoke rapidly in a voice that didn't sound anything like her. ‘I think that perhaps it's time for us to live apart.'

It hit him like a painful blow to the solar plexus; for a moment he couldn't speak – couldn't even breathe. ‘What are you saying?' he gulped finally.

Lucy cupped her hands round the polystyrene cup and looked down. ‘I'll tell you,' she said. ‘Please don't interrupt me, or try to argue – this is hard enough already. I just want to tell you and have done with it.'

‘Go on.' David couldn't believe how calm he sounded, but now that the initial blow had fallen, he felt almost detached, as though this were happening to someone else.

She said it all quickly, without looking at him. ‘I don't like what's been happening to us lately. It has nothing to do with Ruth – it has to do with me. And it's not that I don't love you, David – quite the contrary. Recently I've come to realise how much I
do
love you – much more than I've ever loved anyone before.'

He couldn't help himself. ‘Surely that's good?'

‘No, it's not. I don't like what it's doing to me. The other night at Emily and Gabriel's, I suddenly realised that I was jealous – jealous of you and Gabriel. I've never been a jealous person. I've never minded before – about what happened between you. But now I do mind – not because he's a man, but because you loved him – and I don't like that. And the other morning when I nagged you about it, I just couldn't help myself. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't stop.' She swirled the murky dregs around in the cup. ‘I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm afraid of loving you too much.'

‘But what is there to be afraid of?'

Lucy bit her lip. ‘I suppose it's a sort of superstitious fear,' she confessed. ‘That if I love you too much – invest too much of myself in you – you'll be taken away from me somehow. And I'd rather have that happen on my own terms.'

‘You're going to try to stop loving me, then?' David's voice seemed to him to come from a long distance.

She replied obliquely. ‘All of the things that have happened over the past few weeks, all of the misery that we've encountered, all of the unhappy people; when you think about it, it's all been about love. Casualties of love, every one of them. People who have loved too much, and look what it's done to them. Alistair Duncan loving Father Julian. Nicola Topping and her Ben. Vera Bright and her American. Vanessa. Rachel, too, in her way. And Ruth – damaged in the second generation by love that's gone wrong. And of course there was you and Gabriel.' She sighed softly. ‘I don't want to be one of those casualties, David.'

David realised that what he said next could well determine the course of the rest of his life, and he'd better get it right. He fought the desire to reach across and touch her. Instinctively he knew that this was not the time for tears or impassioned argument, or for any sort of emotional blackmail; when he spoke his voice was calm and reasonable. ‘Lucy, my own dear love, don't you realise that it's not possible to love too much – only too little? It's true that we've seen a lot of pain in other people, caused by love. Casualties of love, you called them, and that may be true. But I think that our love is something different from that – something strong and good, not constricting or limiting.'

He tore a piece of polystyrene from his cup. ‘I'd rather think of it in terms of redemption, to use a Christian term. Redemption of the past. What we feel for each other doesn't cancel out what happened to either one of us before. But it can redeem it, if we let it. And in a sense it can redeem what's happened to all of those other unhappy people, if we can make it work. Our love is the only thing that makes it all worthwhile.' Unconsciously he was shredding the cup, reducing it to bits of polystyrene all over the table. ‘I remember what it was like to be alone, before I met you,' he said. ‘And nothing could be worse than that. I don't want to go back to that, and I don't really think that you do either. It seems to me that taking the risk of loving – loving too much, as you call it – is far better than not loving at all.'

At last she lifted her eyes to meet his; hers were swimming with unshed tears. That unnerved him at last. ‘Please don't cry,' he said brokenly. ‘I can't bear to see you cry, my love.'

She reached across the table and took his hand. ‘Well,' she said, with a watery smile, ‘it's still over a week until the first of April. It looks as though you've got a week to convince me.'

David grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet, leaving a mess of polystyrene behind. ‘Come on, then,' he urged. ‘A week isn't much time, and the clock is running. Let's go home, love.'