A Sight for Sore Eyes (14 page)

Well, he has seen it and the reaction was deeply satisfying, I'm telling you.' Holly's new boyfriend was called Christopher and she was out with him every night, in spite of exams. If he wasn't fazed about the Finals he was in the throes of at Eastcote College she certainly wasn't going to get steamed up about a piddling thing like A Levels. 'I'd like to meet him,' Francine said. 'You know, sometimes you sound like your wicked stepmother. You really do. A hundred years old and well past everything.' 'Because I said I'd like to meet Christopher?' 'Because of your tone and your words. Oh, don't look like that. I'm sorry. I'll tell you what, when Eastcote puts on its degree show you can come along with me and we'll meet Chris there and his twin brother who's been doing Fine Art and who's got a painting in the exhibition. He looks just like Chris and he's bound to fancy you and - wouldn't it be great, France, if you and me were going about with twins?' Francine shook her head. 'Imagine Julia.' 'If I didn't know her I couldn't imagine her,' said Holly. 'You'd have to be a - a Balzac to imagine her.' 'Which reminds me I ought to work. I've got French tomorrow morning.' Francine experienced no traumas over her exams. She encountered no surprise questions and nothing much to alarm her. But when she had done the last exam and all was finished she was surprised to find Julia waiting for her outside school with the car. Julia explained that she had been to see the Chief Executive with a request which, she said, she knew would gladden Francine's heart. 'To whisk you out of school now those A Levels are done with and carry you off on holiday. And she was perfectly charming about it. Absolutely no point, she said, in trolling in here for another two weeks until the official end of term.' And no school-leaving parties, no idling about the grounds with one's friends, no freedom to swim in the pool whenever one chose and play tennis and make plans for future reunions. 'Where are we going?' Francine asked. 'Wait till you hear. A lovely little island in the Outer Hebrides. There's nothing there but the seabirds and the beaches and the mountains and the heather.' I won't go, she thought of saying. Julia can't drag me out of the house by force, any more than she can keep me a prisoner inside it. When they got home she found that Julia had already packed her suitcase. All their luggage was standing in the hall. Julia had arranged with Noele to keep an eye on the house, cancelled the milk and the papers. And no time was to be wasted. They would be flying to Glasgow that evening, meeting her father at Heathrow. Before they left she tried to phone Holly, but there was no reply and when she tried Miranda she got the answering service.

Chapter 16

He hardly ever got letters. His post was mosdy services bills and junk mail. The envelope he picked up from the doormat was buff-coloured with University of Eastcote and the college's eagle crest in red in the upper left-hand corner. He couldn't expect to be informed of his degree yet, it was too soon and wouldn't, anyway, come like this. Opening it suspiciously, he stared for a while without understanding. Then he did, then he realised. It hadn't crossed his mind. Of course he knew that Eastcote annually awarded a prize to the producer of the best piece of craft work submitted for the BA degree in Ornamental Art. He knew it, but hadn't connected it with himself. And here, now, he was being told that he had won the Honoria Carter Black prize for his mirror. It brought with it an award of one hundred pounds. The money was nothing - though he could do with any money -but the prize was prestigious, something to be immensely proud of. Teddy had never before won anything. He had not even won praise or encouragement. His school had been so committed to establishing equality that the staff only told a pupil he or she had done well if they could tell every other member of the class the same thing. Non-competitiveness was the watchword. As to his family, his grandmother thought praising a child encouraged him to show off; his parents hadn't thought about it at all. A strange thing was happening to him. And this, too, was new. He was feeling what all who have a sudden success experience, a desire to tell someone about it. He had never before wanted to tell anyone anything, but now telling himself wasn't enough. That inner exchange which was his version of conversation seemed inadequate. But there was no one to tell. Mr Chance was long dead. He made a face at the idea of going round to his grandmother's. What would he say and what would she? Damon he had never phoned again after his driving test was behind him. Megsie had put her head over the fence and invited him to Nige's birthday barbecue, but he had said he was busy. And he had sat indoors on that hot Saturday afternoon, watching Mr Chance's workshop used as a summer-house, his garden filled with smoke and the smell of burnt burgers and sausages, wondering what they were all saying about the car next door, maybe looking at it and speculating. But he had never regretted not accepting the invitation. He couldn't be with people, just as he couldn't now, to save his life, tell his news to Megsie and Nige. His satisfaction must be from the prize alone and from himself alone knowing about it. Still, he soon found that others knew, everyone who mattered, for when he went along to the Chenil Gallery in the King's Road where the Eastcote Graduation Exhibition was being set up he was congratulated by all sorts of people. The Dean of Studies happened to be there and the Head of the Ornamental Art Department as well as a great many graduands, none of whom had taken much notice of him before. It was the first time anyone had ever shaken hands with him and he found it a novel, not altogether pleasant, experience. He didn't really know how to comport himself, but shifted about, muttering his thanks and longing to get to his mirror which he could see in the distance out of the corner of his eye. A woman whose function he didn't know and whom he had never seen before told him it was to have a section of the wall space to itself. Winners of the Honoria Carter Black prize always did have their own stand in pride of place. They thought of hanging it just here where the light was good - what did he think? He didn't think, he didn't know. 'I guess it's OK,' he said. 'Why don't you come back the day before the Private View and see if you like it?' She smiled. He was so handsome and so shy, and so talented. 'Then there would be time to change it round.' 'No, it'll be OK,' said Teddy and he went off to find someone to tell him when and where he would get the money. Winning the prize stimulated him to phone the newspaper with his advertisement. While he'd still got some money left to pay for it. The fifty pounds from 'Max and Mex' was gone and not much remained of the sum he had taken off Keith's body, though, apart from buying himself a watch, he had been as frugal as possible. In drafting his small ad he would have liked to find some way of putting in 'winner of the Honoria Carter Black prize' but people might not know what that was and it would raise the price of insertion. In the end he simply wrote: Joiner and cabinet-maker. BA in Ornamental Art, will make or fit fine furniture to your spec~fication. Reasonable charges, and he added his phone number. Then he thought that putting young before joiner and newly starting out after art would make it sound more appealing. He asked for the paragraph to go in three weeks running. With no positive idea of where he was going or even why he was going, he screwed up his nerve and took the Edsel out. First he checked there was petrol in the tank. It was nearly full. Petrol was something he couldn't afford, but he certainly couldn't afford to run out of it and have to abandon the car somewhere. The Edsel, he remembered Damon saying, had a heavy fuel consumption. He wouldn't take it far. Maybe only round the block. Handling it was very different from driving Damon's VW Golf. The engine stalled. The car juddered and sprang about like some lively young and very large animal - a cheetah maybe. Teddy kept his head, told himself to keep cool. It was a matter of getting the hang of it and very soon he did, reversing the Edsel and, finally, learning control, manoeuvring it through the wide-open double gates into the quiet street. It was early on Sunday morning. He did what he had promised himself and drove it round the block. Twice he had stalled the engine, but twice started it again without difficulty. He came back to the open gates, the empty garden and the carport and, much more confident now, took it out again. This time he stopped and parked it, bought a Sunday paper, started it up again with no difficulty. A man carrying a carton of milk turned round to watch him pass, a woman with a dog stared at the great pale-yellow, glittering, fish-like torpedo-like thing. The purring many-finned projectile with its silver eyes and pursed codfish mouth. It was no longer polished and gleaming, for no one had laid a sponge or duster on it in five months, so when Teddy got back for the second time without mishap he set about cleaning it. Leaving the car dirty would, he thought, eventually attract attention to it. Besides, he wanted to be near it legitimately for a while, with a reason for close-up contact. He fetched a sponge, two buckets of water, cloths from the kitchen. Without a hose, cleaning the Edsel took a very long time, particularly as it was not in Teddy's nature to do a less than thorough job. He couldn't smell any smell. And if he couldn't no one could. Plastic had its advantages and this car its uses, if only as a coffin. He felt he had taken a big step. He had taken it out and brought it back, he could drive it. What he must do now was find somewhere, think up somewhere, he could take it and dump it and Keith's body. Some pond or reservoir - the sea? This was flagrant fantasy and he knew it. He wouldn't be capable of driving a car into a pond and sinking the car and getting out of it alive. Besides, where was there such a place he could use without being detected? Brent Reservoir? Impossible. Unthinkable. Probably he would have to dump the body and then, one day, sell the car. Sell it back perhaps to the firm in south London Keith had bought it from. Lift that body out again? If you can kill it and put it there you can lift it out, he told himself, rubbing hard at the Edsel's pastellemon bodywork with a duster. You got it in, you can get it out. Nige had come out into the garden next door with a woman who was probably his mother. They gave him approving smiles. Teddy had noted, with disdain, that people always enjoy the sight of manual work being done, particularly when it is unpleasant. 'You can come and do mine when you've finished with that,' the woman called out. 'Fancy a coffee?' said Nige. Teddy said thanks, but he was busy. He finished the Edsel, locked it and went indoors where he settled down to read the paper he had bought. An article about the kind of people who murder other people told him that psychopaths often begin their career by killing a member of their own family. Did that mean he was a psychopath? He started thinking about Keith's body again, how to dispose of it. In spite of saying he was satisfied with the arrangements for displaying his mirror he went back to the gallery. But on the day of the Private View itself. There is a limit to the indifference one can feel to the opinions of others and though Teddy's scorn threshold was very low, he found he very much wanted to see the look on visitors' faces when they contemplated the mirror, their admiration and perhaps their longing to possess it. He arrived just in time for the Chancellor's speech. The Vice-Chancellor was an academic, but the Chancellor was a television actor who had achieved fame through appearing in a detective series. He spoke in a very actorly way, not saying anything of note, but with impeccable timing and in a Royal Shakespeare Company accent so beautiful that it didn't matter what he said. Teddy was surprised to see so many people. He positioned himself near but not absolutely beside his mirror, preparing for reactions. Then he saw her. She was just a human being among other human beings, a species he disliked. So for a moment he hardly believed her human. Not as the man next to her was, the twin of that guy who was Kelly's boyfriend's friend, and the girl with him, normal ugly people. She was an angel or a wax effigy, a statue or an illusion. Her pale oval face, the dark shining eyes, the full red mouth, formed just one more object of beauty among all these artefacts on show. The most perfect of them, the best, the one that should have won the prize, but still an object. He closed his eyes, mentally shook himself. Was he crazy? This was just a girl. He looked again. She was looking at him. Their eyes met. Never had there been such eyes, never in his experience, so large and depthless and clear and sweet. That word 'sweet' he used to himself and again thought he was losing his mind. He had never used it before except to describe a taste or, as everyone did here, in the college slang meaning of 'good'. She put up her hand to smooth back the black hair that fell across her white forehead, her comma eyebrow, and then she smiled at him. He tried to smile back and was just about succeeding when the crowd shifted, faces moved in front of hers - pig faces, ape faces, misshapen, unfinished, the twin man, the fizz-haired girl - and she was lost. He pushed his way through the crowd. They were drinking now, wine and water and fruit juice. A girl he shouldered past spilt orange juice all over her dress and she shouted angrily at him. Teddy took no notice. He found the woman who had arranged the show and asked her, 'Who's that?' 'I beg your pardon?' 'That girl with the long black hair in the white dress.' 'My dear boy, I don't know. Just a guest.' Kelly would tell him. He looked for her, saw the twin's twin and the twin's friend, but not Kelly. Teddy had never had much to do with these people, had long ago cold-shouldered their pleasantries and their overtures of friendship. They disliked him now, but he couldn't help that. Presumably they would still speak to him if he spoke to them. 'Who's that with your brother?' The twin hesitated. He shrugged, said, not very warmly, 'You mean his girlfriend? Holly?' 'The one with the long black hair.' 'Don't know who that is. Friend of Holly's maybe. Why?' Teddy was now completely nonplussed. He didn't know what one did in a situation like this. Come to that, he didn't know what he wanted. To look, he supposed. To be near and to look and to marvel. He remembered his grandmother and Damon meeting by the french windows, and what Agnes had said and done. 'I want someone to introduce me.' The twin shook his head like someone who has seen everything bizarre this world can offer, but who can still be surprised. 'You really are something else, Brex. I don't know why I don't just tell you to piss off. Come on, then.' They found the three people standing in front of Teddy's mirror. Teddy's internal organs shifted and moved about, and some of them seemed to turn over. He had never before felt anything like it. Perhaps he made a sound, a gasp or a grunt, for the girl turned round and he experienced again the full frontal effect of those eyes, those softly parted red lips, that skin as white as a lily. And this time he saw the whole of her, slender, long-legged, her waist the span of the stems of a bunch of flowers, her wrists and ankles narrow as a child's. The twin was saying, 'Holly, James, this is the guy who made it. The prize winner. He's called Brex, can't remember what comes before Brex.' She said - she, the only she who counted - 'It's on the card, Christopher.' She looked at him. 'Is that right? Teddy?' 'Yes.' 'Your mirror is utterly gorgeous.' It wasn't she who said it but the Holly girl, that big-breasted, green-eyed fizz-head, her voice unbelievably loud and upper-class after hers. Teddy just nodded. He wanted her to say it, but she only smiled. Holly said, 'Have you won thousands and thousands of pounds?' Luckily, she didn't wait for an answer. 'What are you going to do with your mirror? Sell it? Give it to your mum?' They were all looking at him. Their faces, curious, teasing, malicious, confirmed him in his misanthropy. Except hers, which was shy, reserved, those eyes no longer meeting his. A little white hand like a flower held her glass of sparkling water. He knew everyone '5 name but hers, the only one he wanted to know. Along the crown of her bowed head, bisecting the silky blackness, the parting ran like a narrow white road. He imagined laying on it a wreath of pale flowers. He drew a deep breath. 'I shall give it to my woman.' He said it violently, quelling any possible amused response. There was none, but a vague uneasiness. The Holly girl pursed up her thick lips. 'What do you mean, your woman? That's a very peculiar way of puffing it. Do you mean your girlfriend?' 'My woman,' he said firmly and added, 'when she's mine.' His voice entered a deeper range. 'To see her face in,' he said and he turned away with an unfamiliar sensation of the blood rushing up to his face and neck. Then and only then, when he was yards away, swallowed by the crowd, he remembered that he had been told everyone's name but hers. It couldn't be left like that. She was gone. He could no longer see her. Come to me, he asked her silently, come away from them and to me. How did one manage these things? He had no experience, no guidelines, no knowledge. He