A Sight for Sore Eyes (26 page)

looked at her and adored he was erect and strong, a current flowing through his veins, but as soon as they touched and she was in his arms he wilted and shrank like a poisoned tree? Slowly he walked back to Orcadia Place. He would spend the night there, sleep in that bed. If she had stayed, eventually all would have been well, he thought. He thought it resentfully, though by now he had forgotten his near-dislike of her in the memory of how beautiful she had looked in that room, better even than he had anticipated. Before meeting her that afternoon he had put the finishing touches to the brickwork. Alone now, in the silent and otherwise dark house, he began the task of plastering. It was far from the simple job he had thought. In fact, try as he would, taking it slowly and methodically, using the tools he had bought, the diamond-shaped plasterer's trowel and the rectangular one, he was unable to achieve an absolutely smooth and regular surface. It irked him to fail at something which fools like the men his father had worked with did easily every day. But those men had had years of practice and to him it was new. Still, he refused to be content with a botched job and, scraping off the plaster, began again. This time was better. Practice was all. At last the result was close to what he aimed at, acceptable even to a perfectionist like him. Tomorrow he would paint the wall he had made and do it before he went to fetch Francine. After he had taken a bath in that free-standing claw-footed tub, he found that his mind was still stirred up with a million thoughts and fancies. He was sure he would be a real man, a potent man, if he had more money. At the back of his mind, however much he resisted it, was the fear that Francine despised him. For his class, his accent, his home background and his poverty. How could you make satisfactory love to a woman who felt only contempt for you? Picking up his clothes from the floor - he would wash them next day in the Orcadia Cottage machine - he felt in his jeans pocket and brought out the small leather-bound address book that had been in Harriet's handbag. Strange, he thought he had thrown it away when he discarded the bag. Returning to the white silk bed where he and Francine had lain that afternoon, he flicked through the pages of the address book, but only one name meant anything to him: Simon Aipheton. He dropped the address book on the floor. It was two in the morning. Several clocks in the house told him so, but in silence; none of them chimed the hour.

Chapter 29

The woman who accompanied Franklin Merton on his holidays, and who had by this time been his companion on several of these trips, he had met in the Green Park one sunny afternoon in June. Met, that is, meaning encountered, for they had first been introduced to one another some forty-five years earlier. Franklin was on his way from Green Park tube station down the Queen's Walk to have lunch with a friend at his club in St James's when he saw ahead of him, gambolling on the grass, an Irish setter. As such dogs invariably did, this one reminded him of O'Hara, whom he had been obliged to relinquish to Anthea when he went off with Harriet. In subsequent years he often thought it had been a poor exchange. The dog came up to him, Franklin put out his hand in a gentle and friendly way, the dog approached, and in that moment a woman appeared, as it seemed, from nowhere. It was Anthea. He hadn't seen her for eighteen years. In the decade prior to that he had only seen her twice. He knew she had married two years after their divorce, that her husband had been well-off, that he had died and left her a house somewhere in Mayfair. 'Hallo,' he said. 'Hallo.' 'What's the dog called?' 'De Valera.' She had worn very well, he thought. She must be sixty-five or -six but she looked younger than Harriet. A comfortably plump woman, she had a smooth, unlined round face and her grey hair, untinted, shone like newly polished silver. If she wore make-up it was discreetly applied. The only signs of her wealth were the large diamond rings on both her hands, for the tweed suit she wore, though obviously once expensive, had seen better days. She put out her hand and when the dog came to her, held him by the collar as if to keep him from the cajolements of strangers. 'Come and have a drink,' said Franklin. 'What, now?' 'I know a nice little pub off St James's Square.' 'So do I,' said Anthea. 'Probably the same one. We always had a lot of tastes in common. How's your wife?' As Franklin returned a rather clipped answer to this question he was thinking that she would refuse his invitation. He found himself quite intensely minding this. 'Do come,' he said. She put the dog on the lead. In the pub they gave De Valera a bowl of water and there returned to Franklin's mind a similar scene in a pub when he was nearly thirty years younger, but then the woman was Harriet and the dog was O'Hara. He also remembered, rather later, the friend he was meeting and he phoned the club and said he had flu. After a couple of dry martinis Anthea said, 'I'll just take Dev back to Half Moon Street and then I'd like to give you lunch.' No woman had ever before paid for any meal eaten by Franklin. It was a novel situation and strangely exciting. When they parted he asked if he could see her again and two months later they went on holiday together to Lugano. That had been five years before. Now, in a borrowed villa outside San Sebastian, or rather, at that precise moment, sitting on the terrace of a restaurant and looking at the great curved bay and the cresting waves, Franklin said not very romantically, 'Shall we give it another go?' 'I beg your pardon?' 'We don't have to get married unless you're fussy about that. Nobody cares these days. But we do rub along rather well together, don't you think?' 'We always did,' said Anthea, 'until you took up with that red-haired cow.' 'Calling names doesn't help. I think she's got a teenager in tow, very young anyway. I've seen all the signs.' 'She'll take a lot of keeping. From what you say she's an expensive bitch. I could help with that, but I draw the line at someone else's toy boy.' Anthea looked speculatively at him over the rim of her glass. 'You're sure it's me you want and not De Valera?' Franklin smiled his death's-head grin to take the sting out of what he had to say. 'If we wait much longer the poor old boy will have gone to the Happy Hunting Ground.' Recalling from somewhere or other that new plaster must be left to dry, for at least a day and perhaps more, Teddy got to work next morning on the backyard. He had woken early, for a few seconds with no idea where he was. Then he remembered, lie was up and dressed and outside soon after seven. It was still dark. The day ahead would be misty and damp. Without too much difficulty he lifted the manhole cover and laid it on the flagstones. A good many solutions to the problem of the open manhole had suggested themselves to him: a flower-bed planted in a fibreglass liner with maybe one tree in it or a rosebush, a birdbath on a plinth or a second marble urn, another paving stone set in cement like the rest of the components of the courtyard. He thought wistfully of creating something beautiful and of transforming this rather dull backyard. What he would have liked best was a statue, a figure, for instance, of Francine in bronze or marble. That was impracticable, he wasn't a sculptor and the materials in any case would be too expensive. A flagstone inserted in the opening would be the best and safest idea. By the time daylight had come, a pearly cold daylight that seemed to bear no relation to a risen sun, he had found what he was looking for, not in this courtyard but on the edge of the paved area at the front of the house. The flagstones up against the flower borders on either side were loose and had simply been laid flat on the soil below. However, only one of them was approximately the right shape and size. Teddy realised that he would have to make a wooden frame to insert in the aperture, rest the stone on it and cement it in place. He prised up the stone and watched the woodlice he had disturbed running all directions. A couple of snails adhered to its underside. He brushed them off and when he looked back on the doorstep had the satisfaction of seeing a thrush intent on cracking the shell of one of them, beating it against the flags. Crumbs of soil and flakes of stone made a trail through the house as he passed. He would clear it up later, have a good clean. It was essential to maintain the house in immaculate condition, in a better state, in fact, than that in which he had found it. The frame he would make of oak, for this was a wood which was practically indestructible, everlasting and undamaged by water, drought or time. He took measurements, hid the flagstone under the silvery grey shrubs at the side of the courtyard and replaced the manhole cover. His next task would be the purchase of mart white vinyl paint and more ready-mixed cement. A piece of oak he had at home would do for the frame. If not, that would be something else to buy. He washed his hands thoroughly, found a dustpan and brush and the vacuum cleaner, and removed from the floors all traces of the passage of that flagstone through the house. Then he drove home, stopping for the paint and the cement on the way. Luckily, he had a piece of oak he thought might be big enough. There was no time to waste and he got busy with his saw. He was meeting Francine at three. While he worked he thought about Harriet Oxenholme's bank card. Not the two credit cards, the Diners Club and the American Express, but the Visa Connect card which, from observing the behaviour of other people at cash dispensers, he knew might be used for extracting money from a bank account. How did it work? What did you do? Half an hour was all the time he needed to complete the drawings for the built-in cupboards in the Highgate house. He put them in an envelope with his estimate, addressed the envelope to Mr Habgood and went out to buy a stamp. The bank next to the Post Office had a cash dispenser beside its front entrance. Teddy eyed it speculatively. He only had to wait a few minutes. A woman, a young girl really, approached the dispenser and looked over her shoulder to the right and the left before taking a card out of her bag. Trying to be streetwise, Teddy thought. Well, he wasn't going to lay a finger on her. The idea made him shudder, for although she was about the same age as Francine, she was in every way inferior, overweight, spotty and with stubby red hands. He watched those hands, the fingers with the bitten nails. She put the card into a slot and a lot of green letters came up on to the screen. He got as close behind her as he dared and just made out that the machine was asking for a number. That must be what she punched in. She suddenly looked round sharply and he retreated to be on the safe side, started walking away. Looking back over his shoulder he saw the card reappear and, with a sudden feeling of envy, a wad of cash come out. So you had to have a number. Just a number the bank gave you? Or your phone number? Your date of birth, if there weren't too many digits? Somehow, he knew Harriet wouldn't have used her date of birth. What would she have used? If he could find that number his worries were over. All that morning Julia's sufferings had been terrible. She had no belief in Francine's story that Miranda's father might be offering her a job and she was going to see him. Why would a man like that, a tycoon, have a job for an untrained eighteen-year-old anyone could see was emotionally disturbed? She had begun her pacing just after Francine left the house. On one of her marches to the front window she saw a young man sitting in the bus shelter. He was fair-haired and of a heavy build, but that didn't fool Julia. Jonathan Nicholson was clever and would stop at nothing to get Francine. Disguise was an area in which he was an expert and to lighten his hair and flesh out his body was child's play to him. If he was bent on defying her she was not going to rise to his bait so easily. Instead of going immediately across the road, she opened the window, leaned out and stared at him. He stared back. He had seen her, he knew she was watching him. She moved slowly, in a deceptively casual manner, no manic rushing this time, put on her coat, buttoned it, wrapped a scarf round her neck, opened the front door. He was still there, but standing up now. She hesitated, thought, suppose he attacks me? Suppose he strikes me, pushes me into the road? It was a risk she had to take. For Francine's sake, to save Francine from him. Nothing he could do to her mattered when it was a question of Francine's safety. She walked briskly across the road to the island. A stream of traffic held her there. The last vehicle in it was the bus. That was just her luck. To be so near to her quarry and have him get away yet again. She couldn't cross until the bus had gone and he, of course, had gone with it. Or had he? She hadn't seen him get on it, only its arrival, a big red screen before her eyes, and seen its departure wipe him away. He might simply have hidden himself, calculating that she would believe him gone with the bus, while in fact he was hiding behind that fence or in that garden or down that side turning. Julia searched for some time. She went into several gardens and even lifted the lid off someone's wheelie-bin to see if he was lurking inside. The householder put a head out of an upstairs window and shouted at her. Then she went up and down the street looking for Jonathan Nicholson's car. Of course, she failed to find it because he had been using the bus, hadn't he? His car must be in for a service or perhaps he had sold it, got rid of it because it was such a giveaway and he knew she was on to him. Eventually she went back home, but an hour or so later she understood that he had been there all the time, for she saw him back in the bus shelter, his hair restored to its natural dark, his extra weight shed. This time he was accompanied by several others. Bodyguards, she thought, heavies was what they called them. She didn't go back. She found Miranda's number in Francine 's address book and called it. A girl who certainly wasn't Miranda answered, thus confirming Julia's worst fears. Julia asked to speak to Miranda's father and the girl said he was at his office and then, hastily and obviously untruthfully, that she'd heard Francine was seeing him about a job. It was just the sort of lie a young girl would tell, confident that by so doing she was serving her friend. Because she didn't want Jonathan Nicholson to see her go out and thus leave the field clear for him, Julia waited until he and his companions had gone once more into hiding and then she took her shopping bag and went down to the High Street. In the continental patisserie she bought olive ciabatta and date bread and chocolate croissants and several packets of white chocolate finger biscuits. Much of this she ate for her lunch, gorging until she felt sick. When Richard phoned in the late afternoon she put on a bright, sweet manner, telling him everything was fine, it was a lovely day for late November and Francine - imagine - had gone out with Miranda. 'I thought you were going to say, with that boy,' said Richard. 'He'd like to. But she's not having any, or that's how I see it. The reality is, he's been watching for her from that bus shelter most of the day.' 'He's what?' 'I'm afraid he does a lot of that. He's quite obsessed.' 'He's not stalking her, is he?' Julia suddenly felt very frightened. Of course Jonathan Nicholson was stalking her, but if she admitted that to Richard he would bring the police in, maybe take legal advice. She didn't want interference with her management of Francine, she didn't want busybodies coming in and taking away her control. Her denials poured out. 'Oh, no, no, what an idea! I wouldn't have that, I'd stop that. Let me have a look... He's gone now, disappeared. Somehow I have a feeling, an actual gut feeling, darling, that he won't come back.' 'I hope you're right. I should be home by six. Will Francine be home?' 'Oh, yes, quite early. She promised:' 'If you stayed here and slept here and were here all the time it would be all right.' Teddy spoke sullenly, in a grudging, accusing tone. 'I could do it right if you were here with me.' His grim looks troubled her. He ceased to be handsome or fun or attractive when he drew his black brows together and pushed out his lower lip. Paradoxically, he then looked much younger than his real age, like an overgrown naughty child. 'You won't do what I want,' he said. 'I only want you to do what I want, it's not much to ask, it's simple enough.' 'But I do do what you want, Teddy. I let you wrap me in all those silk things and draperies and whatever, and shine lights on me and put all that jewellery all over me, I do let you, but I can't do it all the time. It makes me feel - well, awkward, I don't know, uneasy. I can do it for a bit, but not for hours and hours.' 'Then what do you want?' 'Maybe go for a walk sometimes, have a meal somewhere, go out in the car, talk. I'd really just like to talk. We never talk.' They were in Harriet's bedroom, Francine on the bed whose sheets he had changed, puffing on the pillows white organza slips he had found in a cupboard. She had been naked at his request, hung only with all the many pearl