Going Wrong (20 page)

He said, “I don’t want to put you out of here, Tessa. You’re Leonora’s mother and I can’t forget that. I’m going upstairs and while I’m away perhaps you’ll go.”

It was to be alone really, not just to get away from her. So he had been right about Rachel. It was Rachel who had done and who was doing all the damage, Rachel who was probably with Leonora even at this moment, feeding her poison. Leonora had been more gentle with him, more loving, that day than at any time he could remember since she moved into the flat. True, it had been on the phone. But Saturday it hadn’t been on the phone. “Oh, Guy, how I wish …” What had she been going to say?
How I wish we could be as we once were? How I wish I’d never met William?

Now, though, she would be back home with Rachel, sick, bed-bound Rachel. He could imagine her sitting on the side of Rachel’s bed and Rachel repeating what he had said to her, adding, “What can you expect from low-life like that?”

Downstairs he heard Tessa’s footsteps. They stopped. She had paused. Of course. She had stopped in front of the Kandinski, was taking it in, valuing it. The footsteps started again, the front door closed hard if not quite with a bang. He went into his bedroom and watched her from the window. She was going in the Marloes Road direction, looking for a taxi. He hoped she wouldn’t get one, she probably wouldn’t, not at this hour.

So it was Rachel. The connection must have been the one he first thought of, through the social work she and Poppy Vasari had in common. He went downstairs and was starting to dial one of the numbers he had for Danilo when he remembered what Tanya had told him, that Danilo was in Brussels. It slightly troubled him that he was as yet unable to call off the dogs that menaced Robin Chisholm, but there seemed nothing to be done about this.

Something was puzzling him and continued to do so on and off throughout the night. Dining with Celeste at the Pomme d’Amour, meeting Bob Joseph afterwards for a drink at the club in Noel Street, his mind kept reverting to Tessa Mandeville and the things she had said. What had she really come for?

That was all rubbish about getting a court order preventing him from “molesting” Leonora. How could you molest someone when she wanted your company? It was Leonora herself who, three and a half years before, had made that arrangement to lunch with him on Saturdays. When Rachel and the rest of them no doubt had persuaded her to stop going out with him in any real sense, to stop being his girl-friend, she had proposed the regular Saturday meetings. Leonora wanted those lunch dates as much as he did, that was certain. She wanted him to phone her. Hadn’t she said when he left her on Saturday, “Phone me tomorrow”?

So Tessa hadn’t really meant that at all. That was just a cover for something else. What she had come for was ostensibly to stop him from making some sort of scene at Leonora’s wedding but really to
tell him where Leonora’s wedding would be,
a venue he knew quite well already. He was suspicious of them all and now he was even more suspicious of Tessa. What was she up to? Why come all that way, visit him at home as she had never done before, just to tell him that?

Then he understood. He nearly laughed out loud, there in front of Celeste. The woman had told him Kensington Register Office because it wasn’t going to be there at all. It was going to be at the Camden Register Office, which was at King’s Cross, and in Newton’s borough. You could get married in your own borough or that of the person you were marrying, it was matter of choice. She had told him Kensington in case he decided to go along. The woman was so transparent it was really quite funny.

Not that it mattered. Leonora wouldn’t get married. She wouldn’t
want
to get married. He heard her voice again and the tone seemed infinitely soft and yearning as she expressed her wish for what might have been. “Guy, dear,” she had called him when she had explained she couldn’t dine with him. They probably threatened her with all kinds of things when she told them she was thinking of going back to him. Rachel, for instance, who was buying Leonora’s share of the flat from her—Rachel had very likely told her the deal would be off if she persisted in having any further to do with him. Anthony Chisholm was capable of cutting her out of his will or at least of stopping any money he might be making over to her.

“Guy, sweet,” said Celeste, “a penny for your thoughts.”

He told her about Tessa’s visit. Her face clouded over. She said nothing. “I’ve got a headache,” he said. “I usually have these days. D’you think it’s being angry most of the time?”

She went home with him. “You have to accept it,” she said gently. “Sooner or later you have to accept she’s going to marry William.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

She knelt on the paving, picking up the pieces of broken vase. He wished he hadn’t said what he had said, but she didn’t reply. Danilo would be back tomorrow night, he’d keep on trying to phone him from ten onwards. Probably, to compensate for all the trouble he was causing, he’d have to give Danilo another fifteen hundred, but who cared?

Celeste said, “Buy her a really nice wedding present, why don’t you?”

She was never bitchy, but this time … ? Surely she didn’t mean it seriously? He poured himself a last drink, vodka on the rocks, realizing as he did so that he had been drinking non-stop since the Campari orange he had when Tessa came at five.

In the morning, while Celeste was still asleep, he phoned the flat in Portland Road. Maeve answered. She was about to leave for work. He didn’t ask for Leonora, not immediately.

“How’s Robin?” He really wanted to know. Worrying about Danilo’s hitman getting at Robin had kept him awake most of the night.

“He’s fine,” she said. But did she know? Had he just been fine when she left him the night before?

“You’ve spoken to him this morning?”

“Just now, Guy.”

Oh, the relief! It wasn’t that he cared about Robin Chisholm’s fate but he realized, after that black eye and what Tessa had said, that Leonora might so easily blame him for any harm that came to her brother.

“He rang me. He’d had such a super sleep, he was feeling really refreshed, you know, he sounded on top of the world. Isn’t that great?”

Guy said it was and could he speak to Leonora?

“She isn’t here, Guy. She’s at William’s.”

He phoned the Georgiana Street number. It was early, of course, it wasn’t yet nine, but he was still surprised to hear Newton’s voice—no, more than that, astounded, thrown. He nearly put the receiver down. Instead he said, “It’s Guy Oman.”

“Oh, hallo.” It wasn’t said in a friendly way. But Guy would have despised the man even more than he already did if he had spoken in a hearty or ingratiating manner.

“How’re
you?”
he said in his best transatlantic style, but coldly.

“I’m extremely well and I hope you are. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I’d like to speak to Leonora.”

Most people, before imparting unwelcome information, say that they are afraid. “I’m afraid I’ve something rather unpleasant to tell you …” Newton didn’t do that and Guy noticed.

“She’s not here.”

“Now come on,” said Guy, the ready anger rising. “I’ve just been told less than five minutes ago that’s she’s with you.”

The man sounded bored, still within the limits of patience. “Less than five minutes ago she was. Two minutes ago she went out. Would you like me to tell you where?”

“Of course I would. Where is she?”

“At her father’s. Susannah’s mother has died and Leonora has gone with her to see to things, register the death and see undertakers. I’ve now told you all I know, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll ring off as I’m already late. Goodbye.”

He had no idea where Susannah’s mother had lived, had barely known Susannah had a mother. Hopeless to try and find them, hopeless to pursue that inviting image of himself sitting in a waiting room with Leonora, talking to her softly, then taking the two of them out to a wonderful lunch somewhere. A comfort for Susannah, whom he had never disliked, take her mind off her mother, whom she had probably been fond of. He would have to catch Leonora later in Lamb’s Conduit Street.

He took a cup of tea up to Celeste. “Thank you, sweet Guy,” she said.

She opened her eyes and then she put out her arms to him. It was weeks since he had made love to her. Sexual desire seemed to have been drained out of him by all that had happened, by fear and anger. But he bent down and let her hug him. She was warm and sweet and she felt silky to touch. He lay down beside her and held her, not realizing how very hard he must have clutched her until she struggled and freed her nose and mouth from the pressure of his face, until she gasped, “No, Guy, you’re hurting!”

While she was in the bath he called Anthony Chisholm’s number. The line was engaged. Five minutes later it was still engaged. He got the operator to check it, was told the number was indeed engaged speaking, and decided to give up until the afternoon. Fatima arrived as he was leaving the house. She made a noise like a distressed hen-bird with a lost chick when she saw the black-and-pink shards. Guy got his car out. He was going to Northolt to the studio, then to make a check on a picture sale at a motorway hotel at the start of the M.l. Backing the car across the cobbled mews, driving slowly down towards the Earl’s Court Road, he wondered if perhaps he had outgrown his house. In his position he was past the little mews-house stage. After all, he would be thirty in January. A house in Lansdowne Crescent or maybe even something in the neighbourhood of Campden Hill, Duchess of Bedford Walk … Would Leonora mind being that side, the
good
side, of Holland Park Avenue?

Carry On, Kittens
did better in Barnet than even
Lady from Thailand.
The woman who was running the sale and with whom he had a nasty lunch in the motel dining room (oval plates piled with gristle-bound blackened steak, tinned peas, tomato halves, chips, mushrooms as slimy as slugs, and broccoli spears like toy farmyard trees) told him she could sell twice, three times, as many. Guy undertook to provide that number. On the motel phone he tried to call Lamb’s Conduit Street and failed but succeeded in getting Tanya at her boutique. Danilo was expected home in the late evening, certainly by eleven.

Guy had a ferociously unpleasant image of Robin Chisholm pressing the button on his entry-phone, opening the door in his towelling robe to the man who had come to mend something or read some meter. The silenced gun or cosh, or, if Danilo’s “help” was being really vicious these days, the thin swift stiletto.

He drove to the travel agent’s. Business was booming there too. In the office at the back he phoned the flat in St. Leonard’s Terrace. There wasn’t going to be an answer, the bell rang and rang, ten times, fifteen. He put the receiver back and redialled. This time Robin’s voice answered after four rings. Probably he’d misdialled that first time. It was a great relief to hear Robin saying, “Hallo, hallo?” with increasing irritability.

They buoyed him up wonderfully, the considerable and varied successes of the day. Things hadn’t gone so well for a long time. Going home, even going to the West End, it would have been usual to take a route north of Regent’s Park, but he found himself approaching the Euston Road. Across Tavistock Place, into Guilford Street, and Lamb’s Conduit was just down there … He wasn’t supposed to see her except on Saturdays, except for Saturday lunch, but—well, come
on.
She wanted to see him. Hadn’t she said how much she wished they could be together again?

It was hot, the still, yellow heat of London in sunshine. Any place he had been in with her and been happy brought him pain. It was as if he had two levels of feeling about her, the upper, in which he was optimistic, cheerful, confident, and the lower where fear was, and doubt. The places they had been together evoked images in that lower world. He remembered rejections, he remembered, with something that was more like panic man pain, that it was now six years since they had made love.

The houses in this part of London are old, early rather than late nineteenth century. Their brickwork is a dark greyish-brown, their doorways and windows are long and narrow, their roofs invisible. Very little green was to be seen except distant tree-tops showing like vegetation in a walled garden. Susannah had window-boxes that contained, instead of the usual geraniums, small-leaved ivies and plants with yellow-grey fluffy foliage. Guy rang the bell, preparing himself, as he always had to, for his first sight of Leonora.

The door was answered by a woman he recognized but couldn’t immediately place. She seemed to be having the same difficulties identifying him.

“Guy Quran,” he said.

“Oh,
yes.
I’m Janice. We met at Nora’s birthday party.”

He hated the diminutive that was allowed to her family but not to him. The woman who had used it he now remembered as the cousin who had been going to Australia to get married. She was rather plump with a pale moon face, prominent eyes, and a great deal of long mousy hair worn in a French plait. Guy particularly disapproved of Indian cotton dresses (cheap, badly cut, and shapeless), and she of course had one on, tan-coloured with black hieroglyphs and white bits. Her hips were round and the effect in his opinion was of someone going to a fancy dress party as a granary loaf.

“I thought you were an undertaker, actually,” she now said. “Susannah’s expecting an undertaker. You know her mother died?”

“Yes. Someone told me. Can I come in?”

Janice admitted him grudgingly. He felt she was looking him up and down as if he was committing some awful social faux pas. “She’s just lost her
mother.
I mean, mostly people write or phone.”

“It’s Leonora I’ve come to see,” he said impatiently.

But at that moment Susannah herself put her head over the banisters. The living room was on the upper floor of the flat, the bedrooms on the lower. Susannah didn’t react towards him as did all the other women close to Leonora—including this indignant Australian—in an aggressive or judgemental way. She called out to him and said how nice of him it was to have come. Obviously she hadn’t heard his remark to Janice. When he got to the top of the stairs she came up to him and, putting her arms round him, kissed him in an almost motherly way, though she wasn’t anywhere near old enough to be his mother.