Authors: J.M. Gregson
‘
Agoraphobia. Nothing physically wrong, you said.’ Zoe quoted him exactly, as if implying that she would reserve her own diagnosis until she saw the patient. She was a ward sister in a private hospital, though she claimed no expertise in psychiatric illnesses.
‘
No. But her brother said when I rang that she still can’t leave the house. I haven’t seen her for over two months, you know.’
He
brandished his lack of concern for the discarded woman like a virtue, Zoe thought. ‘I know you haven’t been to see her. And you don’t propose to see her again. You’ve told me all that. I think I should come with you.’ She offered no reasons, because she was not sure herself why she was so determined to go.
All
she knew was that the resolution had formed at the moment when Chris Hampson had brought the woman’s name into this morning’s argument. Before she saw Raymond with Chris, she had had no intention of going with him to see this other woman whom he had loved. Perhaps she would see other new aspects of Raymond Keane, this man she had thought she knew so well.
Raymond
looked at the still, set face, considering arguments, rejecting each of them in turn as he saw the resolution there. He still didn’t know anything about this woman, he thought, even though he was determined now to marry her, to have her at his side for the rest of his political career. This stubbornness, this small undiscovered part of her, was a new excitement, even if it was a little disturbing.
‘
All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll go this afternoon.’
She
nodded, relaxing imperceptibly, still not looking him in the face. Perhaps she should warm to him for conceding the point without further argument. Instead, she felt a surge of enjoyment in her victory. It was the first real contest they had ever had.
*
It was a little over an hour before Raymond and Zoe left the cottage. The bright winter sun was already low. It shone brilliantly into their faces over the wood, almost touching the tops of the dark firs; in another half-hour it would be gone, and the cold and the silence would have this unpeopled world to themselves.
Peering
into this brilliant light, there was no chance that the pair would see the man who watched, but he moved automatically behind his cypress nevertheless. The woman wore a thick fun fur, its hood raised like a halo round the pale oval of her face. But her court shoes showed him that she had no intention of walking far. Just visiting someone, then; they would probably be back quite soon, the man who watched decided.
The
blonde woman hurried behind Keane to the haven of the XJ12 Jaguar, folding herself gracefully into the passenger seat by the time her companion had opened the big door on the driver’s side. No word had passed between the two from the moment when they had appeared in the wide low doorway beneath the thatched eaves of the cottage.
The
observer watched the Jaguar roar into life, then pour soft clouds of white smoke from its exhaust into the still air. The car reversed from its position alongside the old building, then purred slowly away down the lane. He did not emerge until the last notes of the engine had died away and the car had long disappeared.
Then
he walked swiftly in the opposite direction, his movement a welcome release from the long vigil opposite the cottage. Two hundred yards down the lane, he retrieved his van from its position beneath the trees, where the forest workers’ wide track entered the woods. He made no attempt to follow the Jaguar, was not even curious to know where it had gone.
What
he had to do would be done here. He was sure of that now, though he had not worked out the details yet. It would need to be when Keane came here without the woman, of course; he had no quarrel with her. But there were occasions when the man arrived here alone: he knew that from his observations. That was the benefit of careful, unhurried planning. He was almost ready to make his move now.
When Raymond Keane rang to ask if he might come to see her, Moira Yates answered the phone herself.
Her
former lover’s voice was uncharacteristically uncertain on the other end of the line; she thought she had never heard him so diffident. Perhaps that helped her confidence; although she had not heard Raymond’s voice for many weeks now, she found herself perfectly assured in dealing with it.
‘
There’s no need to treat me as an invalid,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly all right within my own home, you know.’ She listened as he went on haltingly, her mouth forming a curious smile. Then she put her hand over the mouthpiece and said to the two men who were watching her, ‘He’s bringing his new woman along to see us.’
Dermot
Yates sprang to his feet, alarm starting into his wide brown eyes. ‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ he said. ‘If you’ll just let me speak to him—’
But
his sister turned gently away from him, cradling the phone against her neck like a pet kitten. ‘That will be perfectly all right, Raymond. We shall look forward to seeing her.’ It was the first time in months that she had spoken his name, she reflected, and it had not been difficult. She felt thoroughly in control of the situation, despite the concern of the two people behind her. She put the phone down quickly, pretending she had not noticed her brother’s protective hand stretching to take it.
The
second man in the room felt the sick apprehension one only feels when one fears for a loved one. He had known Moira for twenty years, since he had first met her as a raw young Irish girl of sixteen. For most of those years, Gerald Sangster had been in love with the girl who had blossomed so quickly into a poised, dark-haired beauty. It was a hopeless love, as she had told him gently on several occasions over the years, but that did not diminish the pain.
But
the heart accepts no logic, and when Raymond Keane had suddenly deserted Moira, Gerald Sangster had quickly reappeared in her life. Each of them knew that he cherished the hope that even at this stage she might take him as a permanent partner, though neither of them voiced the thought. She could name her own terms, and she knew it. Yet life is cruel enough to dictate that she was less likely to accept him because of that very thought.
But
the spirited, independent girl had shrunk beneath the shadow of illness in the months since Keane had finished with her. She was a brilliant horsewoman and a county tennis player, but now the strong arms which had controlled the liveliest hunter had wasted a little through lack of use, the shoulders which had launched so many blistering backhands were hunched. Gerald had thought many times as he looked at her in these last weeks that you would never have taken her for an athlete, and the thought had seared his aching heart. She had confined herself first to house and garden and then to the house itself, until she shrank nowadays even from an open door to the world outside.
Gerald
went across to her now and took her hands in his, kneeling before her chair on the thick Persian carpet. It might have been a self-conscious gesture, but it came perfectly naturally to him in his concern, and Moira was too sunk into her own thoughts to find the move theatrical. ‘Do you really think you should take this on, love?’ He had taken to adding that little word of affection to the end of his exchanges with her, as his northern mother had once done. She had used the term indiscriminately, but for him it was a small assertion of his closeness and concern. ‘There’s still time for us to ring him back for you. He’ll understand, I’m sure. He won’t know how ill you’ve been, you see, and—’
‘
Oh, but he will, when he sees me.’ She had that abstracted, brittle air they had noticed in her so much as her illness had taken its hold and she had refused to leave the house. But today she was animated, not lethargic. She got up now and went to look at herself in the wide gilt-framed mirror over the marble fireplace. She lifted the tresses of dark hair, holding them back above her ears for a moment, noting the odd strand of silver that had threaded lately among the sable, nodding what appeared to be satisfaction.
She
could see the two concerned male faces behind her reflected in the mirror, and for a moment she studied them, until she apparently decided that they too were as they should be. She had the air of a woman checking the tidiness of a room in preparation for visitors, but in her case she checked the human pieces rather than any inanimate furniture. ‘Cheer up, me boys!’ she said. ‘He won’t bite you, and sure it’ll soon be over.’
The
Irish accent which had almost disappeared over the years had edged its way back into her speech since the agoraphobia had taken a stronger grip on her. Dermot saw in her a woman guying her younger, more innocent self.
The
two men looked at each other, recognizing this sudden resolution in her, bizarre because she had shown so little interest in anything for weeks. Dermot said, ‘I’ll go and get a tray ready. I think we have a fruit cake in the tin.’ He went into the small, neat kitchen, where he had cooked only for one in the seven years since his divorce. He had been happy to take in his beloved younger sister when the tragedy of her break-up with Keane had beset her. But he had not bargained for the illness which followed hard upon it.
Moira
was twelve years younger than him; she had always been a girl to him, applauding his successes on the rugby field in the old days, sharing her own tennis triumphs with him when he had ceased to play seriously. She had seemed to him a golden girl, as she gathered adulation as a young adult. He found it difficult to come to terms now with her illness, so unexpected in this laughing, extrovert sister. He busied himself rattling cups and saucers on to a tray in the small kitchen, wondering miserably how he was to help her to cope with this latest crisis.
Through
the open door to the lounge, he heard Gerald’s low, concerned tones as he talked to the woman he had loved so hopelessly for so long. It’s bound to be a bit of an ordeal for you, love. I’m sure you can handle it, but do remember that we’re here to help if you need us. Just give us a look—there’s no need to say anything, we’ll understand. We’ll soon get the two of them to go, if you want us to.’
Gerald
Sangster went on in the same vein, his anxiety making him speak too much, causing him to repeat himself in the face of the abstracted silence of the woman who sat with her hands in her lap, as upright and still as a sculpture.
Dermot
Yates was irritated as he listened. He washed his hands at the neat modern sink, scrubbing the nails which had collected dirt as he worked in the garden. He had been glad to take advantage of Gerald’s presence to get outside in the crisp winter air for a little while. It allowed the emotionally distressed pair in the house a little privacy, he had told himself; he did not like to admit that he was apprehensive about leaving Moira on her own in the house these days.
Through
the efficient double glazing of the windows, all sound was diminished; Dermot saw rather than heard the big Jaguar turn carefully into the drive of his neat modern house. He went back into the lounge, with the vague idea that they must present a solid front to what he now regarded as the enemy. He had never liked Raymond Keane, even when Moira had been so attached to him. Now he was sure the MP was responsible for her illness, which had started almost from the moment of his desertion.
Yet
when the knock came at the door it was Moira who was swiftest to react, moving easily into the hall, welcoming the uncertain pair on the doorstep as if she were a practised hostess and this was a perfectly normal social occasion. ‘Good to see that the coming political figure still has time for his old friends!’ she said to Keane. He had half expected her to be stiffly distant, half expected her to come forward and kiss him without passion. Instead, Moira took the hand he had never proffered determinedly between hers, looked past him, and said, And this must be ...’
‘
Zoe. Zoe Renwick.’ The tall woman pushed past Raymond and shook hands briefly but firmly. Moira felt too close to her to take her in in detail. She had a vague impression of good teeth in a swift, unaffected smile, of fair, straight hair, of jewel-bright blue eyes. But her own eyes must have been filled with moisture, for she saw the other woman as through a window with rain upon it, swimming in and out of clear vision. She was glad to sit down.
All
the things which Raymond had prepared to say seemed now false to him, in this house where he had never been before, with this woman whose body he had known so intimately and whom he now had to address in front of strangers. Everything he had thought up to say over the last weeks was designed for an exchange between the two of them.
Now
she was ill, a laughing extrovert suddenly pinned within a narrow private world, and he spoke as if he were a hospital visitor at a bedside: there seemed no other way. ‘How are you feeling?’
Dermot
and Gerald looked at each other. It was a question which seemed designed for them, but neither wanted to answer it in front of the patient. Instead, it was Moira who said, ‘Bright as a button, really!’ At that moment she looked it, sitting on the edge of her armchair like a precocious child who knows she is the centre of attention. ‘So long as I don’t leave the house, of course.’