‘Now, dear,’ Joyce said, sliding her empty cup cautiously back on to its saucer. ‘Time you and I had a wee talk. You don’t want an old woman in your house, I’m quite sure of that. And I need to find myself a wee place to stay. Although after what those terrible people did to me, robbing me of half my means, I’ll need to content myself with maybe just a room. Then we’ll be out of your way, Pretzel and me.’
Without a second’s doubt Sara knew that Joyce was opening the way to getting herself clear of her in order to start drinking again. She also knew that she could let her, and that Andrew would probably say she should. The generous thoughts of Joyce enjoying her twilight years bathed in the golden light of her magnanimity, which only two minutes ago had been making her feel cornered yet rather good about herself, were now making her feel stupid.
‘I’m not letting you go off to another crummy bedsit,’ she announced, ‘just so you can start drinking your way through the rent money again. I’m not letting you.’
Joyce managed to look both stunned and pompous. Sara bit her lip, because she was not at all sure exactly what she was going to let her do instead. What options were there? Whatever happened, if Joyce were to stay off the bottle, she would have to restore some pride in
herself. Her little daily self-deceptions and habits of self-aggrandisement would not substitute for the self-belief and self-discipline she would need in order to live independently. ‘You need to find something to do.’
‘Do?’
‘To keep yourself occupied, to have an interest.’ Sara knew as she spoke how interfering she sounded and how futile her interference was, unless Joyce were to start doing something she really enjoyed. ‘Your baking. Your wonderful baking? You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t bake now,’ Joyce said, with finality. ‘I am a musician, not a pastry cook.’ She gazed past Sara as if she were invisible.
‘Right. Well, suppose you start teaching again? Could you give lessons?’
‘Teach?’ Joyce’s eyes travelled to the cello case against the wall. ‘On that? Teach?’
‘Go on, have a try,’ Sara said. She rose, walked over to it and undid the clasps. ‘When did you last play? Ages, I guess? Why not have a go now?’
Joyce was chewing her lips. ‘Well, dear, I don’t know …’
‘Come on! Just a little try. You’ll be rusty, of course, but a bit of practice’ll sort that out. Haven’t you missed it?’
The instrument was dreadfully out of tune. Sara pulled the dressing table chair to the middle of the room, sat down with the cello and after several minutes managed to get it in tune without breaking any strings. Gently she handed Joyce the bow, which she took from her as if the varnish were still wet. With a slight bouncing movement in her wrist she accustomed her arm once more to its
weight and balance. Her fingers had found their correct places on it instantly. She looked at Sara with nervous hope and Sara smiled encouragement. ‘I remember how you played,’ she said. ‘You were wonderful, technically brilliant. It’s impossible to forget how, once you’ve played like that. It’ll come back to you, I know it will. You remember the Bach Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C? Suppose you try the Adagio. Go on.’
She helped Joyce into the seat, easing the cello towards her thin shoulder. Joyce set her lips in a brave line and adjusted her posture until she was sitting proudly straight. With her right hand she was gently stroking the honey-coloured wood of the instrument, reacquainting herself with its sleek hollows, her fingers remembering how beautiful it was. She tapped softly on the strings with her left hand and smiled at the sound, which seemed to invite her to play. She smiled hopefully up at Sara. Perhaps she was right. She could never forget how to play an instrument like this. The Adagio. Of course she remembered it, it was not even difficult. Joyce opened and closed her left hand several times, flexing her stiff fingers, tipped back her head, still smiling, and taking a breath as if she were going to sing, placed the bow tenderly on the string. With a last nervous, excited glance at Sara, she drew it across in the stately, sombre opening notes of the piece. Sara listened, unable to look at her. There was no mistaking it: the sound which was rising from the beautiful, long-neglected cello now in the arms of one of the country’s most celebrated cello teachers was, truly and indisputably, absolutely bloody terrible.
The banging of the front door interrupted the noise and also allowed Sara, coward that she knew herself to be,
to skip off with an apologetic smile without having to say anything. Andrew was in the kitchen, looking around crossly with his hands on his hips as if he were somehow angry with the room.
Sara raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Trouble?’
Don’t ask me how I am, will you?
Andrew nodded, his face softening, acknowledging to her that none of it was Sara’s fault.
Actually, it is. You make me so angry I can’t think straight
.
‘What? What’s the matter?’ Instead of hugging him, Sara stood with her arms folded.
Go on, hug me. Tell me I’m doing a great job looking after Joyce
.
‘I’ve cocked up, that’s what’s the matter,’ he said, rather aggressively.
Fat lot you care, you’re so selfish
. ‘We’ve got the bloke who did it and I cocked up the arrest. Possibly even the conviction.’ He sank into a chair and turned away from her. Still she did not come and hug him. Perhaps she would if he held out his arms to her, but he thought on balance he would not and besides, she had already moved away and was topping up the teapot from the kettle.
‘Tell me,’ she said in a tired voice, reaching into a cupboard for a mug.
I’ve got problems too, you know
.
Andrew sighed and groaned. ‘How long have I been doing this? After all these years, I can’t believe that I got such a basic thing wrong. Maybe that’s the point, it’s Bridger’s job, all that stuff, it’s so long since I did it. I suppose you just get out of practice.’
Why aren’t you sorry for me?
‘Why did you do it, then? Why didn’t you leave it to Bridger?’
Why are you so stupid sometimes?
Andrew did not reply, having no acceptable way of telling her that he had muscled in aggressively on Bridger’s
work rather than spend time dealing with his own problems.
‘Have you found out who she is yet? Was, I mean?’
You’re about to tell me anyway
.
‘Oh, yes. Easy. Her B&B reported her missing. I went to take a look on Saturday night. That’s why I was so late coming in, if you’d given me a chance to explain. I meant to call yesterday but all this came up. Look, Sara, about Saturday—’
It wasn’t my fault
.
‘Never mind about that. Go on. You went to her B&B?’
Yes, it was
.
‘Tatty place just outside Limpley Stoke. Some kind of smallholding as well, they supply the Sulis Clinic and one or two other places. Ivan Golightly, he’s the son of the bloke who runs the Sulis. Wife does the B&B, cheap and cheerless. The B&B, not the wife. Looks like Mrs Takahashi was trying to save money. She’d left her husband at a mycology symposium in Bristol.’
Okay
, don’t
listen, then
.
‘A what?’
I’m not
.
‘Mycology symposium, some academic thing, that’s not the point. He’s a professor somewhere in Japan, Kobe. It’s so straightforward, she was trying to leave him and he killed her.’
All right, fine by me
. His voice tailed off in weary gloom.
‘
What
did you cock up? You still haven’t told me.’
Fine by me, too
.
‘Bridger and I went to see the husband yesterday. It’s years since I did this basic stuff and I just forgot. I bloody forgot to caution him before he started talking about his wife. He as good as admitted he killed her, but that was
before
. And now he’s got his lawyer and interpreter and all that and of course the lawyer’s done the obvious thing and
claimed that everything he said before he was cautioned is inadmissible. She’s right. The bastard practically admitted it and now we can’t use it. And I
know
the bastard’s guilty.’
‘How come you’re so certain?’
‘I told you, he was close to admitting it. He’s a wife-beater. She’d left him. He admits he came to Bath that morning to see her, claims he didn’t find her, but it’s pretty clear he did, and he lost his temper and strangled her.’
‘I always think of wife-beaters doing it behind closed doors. I can’t see anyone strangling his own wife in a pub. In public.’
Andrew tried to hide his exasperation at Sara’s now reflexive questioning of his judgment. While he admitted that it had been helpful before, it was not so now.
‘They’re visitors. They haven’t really got a door to be behind, have they?’ He sipped at the tea that she had now put in front of him, wishing that it were a glass of wine. As he swallowed, his insides griped with the thought that it quite easily could be, were it not for Sara’s insistence on keeping Joyce here and declaring the house a dry zone so that there would be nothing lying around to tempt her.
‘Anyway, look, I meant to come over yesterday after we’d got him in custody but of course as soon as we got back to Manvers Street the whole thing got complicated. The Japanese consulate and all that, interpreters. We had to get all that set up so his lawyer can’t claim he doesn’t understand what’s going on. It took a while. And in the end I was so angry I thought it was better to keep out of your way. Angry with myself, I mean.’ Well mainly, he thought, looking away, and meanwhile what was that bloody racket coming from upstairs?
‘Oh, she’s trying again! That’s Joyce, she’s practising,’ Sara said, with too much enthusiasm. ‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it? That she’s trying, I mean. She’s got a few years’ neglect to make up for. Obviously.’ It was so very obvious from the graceless sawing noises overhead that Andrew did not think he needed to reply, and he restrained himself also from saying anything peevish about what seemed to be Sara’s waning interest in
his
playing. Instead, he drank some of his tea and waited to be asked if he would like to play something for her, because he did, very much, but even more than that, he wanted to be asked.
‘So what happens next? Assuming you’re right about him and he did do it.’
Andrew shook his head and sighed. ‘He’s on police bail pending further enquiries. We let him go back to Bristol to his damn conference. We’ve got his passport and he has to report to a police station every day. Meanwhile we’re checking everything Mrs Takahashi did, everywhere she went, everyone she spoke to. And contacting her sister. There was a mobile in her room with the numbers she spoke to logged. Handy, that. She’d spoken to her sister in Japan three times since she came to England.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Only her husband, on his mobile. They spoke on Friday around five o’clock, just as he says. He’d know we could check, so he hasn’t tried to deny speaking to her or arranging to meet. He’s just lying about when and where.’
‘You sound very sure.’
‘I spoke to the sister this morning. It sounded to me quite likely she didn’t like her brother-in-law very much. She said Mitsuko—that’s Mrs T—was upset about something. I couldn’t grill her on the phone, mainly I was trying
to explain to her why we can’t release the body yet. She’s coming over. I’ll find out more when she arrives.’
‘Don’t the Golightlys know? Or anybody else she spoke to?’
Andrew shook his head. ‘Bridger’s been talking to them. He says they’re pretty laid back, run their place very informally and they thought she was quiet but just let her get on with it. Hilary Golightly took her down into Bath in the morning a couple of times, including the Saturday. Ivan showed her round his vegetable garden on Friday, she didn’t go far that day, went for a walk on the towpath and that was about it. The neighbour Mrs Heffer spoke to her too, on another couple of days, she can’t remember which. They both liked cats. She’s terribly upset. So are the Golightlys, they’ve cancelled all their B&B bookings.’
‘And the PM?’
‘Still waiting. How long
is
that going to go on for?’ Andrew asked, casting his eyes towards the noise of Joyce’s cello. Just then it stopped.
‘And meanwhile your prime suspect’s not admitting anything.’
Andrew grunted unhappily, finished his tea and asked for more in a manner that Sara thought a little too uxorious. She looked into his eyes in search of what she had ever seen in him. And if I don’t find it within the next two minutes it’s over, she told herself, feeling a mixture of desperate sadness and something like panic at being able even to consider the idea so coldly, almost as if she were not still in love with him (when she was). At that moment from above their heads came the deep, long-drawn-out, miserable belching sound of the cello’s lowest open string. Andrew
covered his ears. ‘That’ll be the
Queen Mary
leaving Southampton, then,’ he said. As Sara burst out laughing he pulled her on to his lap and kissed her. Nothing husbandly about
that
, she thought, returning the kiss.
‘I love you,’ she said, eventually.
‘That’s good, because I love you too,’ Andrew growled back in her ear, not a moment too soon. His hands were making their competent way into her clothes. ‘How long have we got before she comes creeping in?’
Sara drew away and shook her head. Why could he not understand that having Joyce in the house was just the same as having his children around? It was out of the question, but she was saved from saying so by the sudden ringing of the telephone.
I
AM NOT SLEEPING
in a room with deadly nightshade dripping down the fucking walls.’
‘It’s not deadly nightshade, it’s wisteria. And it’s hand-printed. This wallpaper is hand-printed, it’s very fine. Of its kind.’
Sara’s eyes took in the painted branches of purple and green that hung down as if trapped but escaping from the join between the walls and ceiling. The room was huge, with vast windows on two sides, and was dominated by a canopied bed draped with swathes of matching green and lilac silk. The carpet was of the coolest pale green and the rest of the furniture, a dressing table, a sofa and two small chairs, was white.