The Bad Sister (23 page)

That, as I discovered, was the simple fact of the matter: as often happens over the years, a charming quality – such as generosity – can develop into an unattractive, even embarrassing characteristic. I'm no psychoanalyst, but it does occur to me that some need to control the lives of others is concomitant with an obsessive need to make gifts;
and an apparent need to dominate the existence of another seemed to be uppermost in Eliza's mind as she spoke to me yesterday in the gallery. It was, of course, not for me to say so at the time – and our exchange was necessarily brief – but charity should surely, in Eliza's case, permit her to remain in her own home.

For it transpires that Eliza Jekyll wishes me to act as a conveyancer for her. She wishes – no less – to give her home away.

And my horror can be imagined when, in the course of the evening at Robina Sandel's, I understood the nature of the intended recipient.

It was none other than Mrs Hyde.

Later

London Transport has certainly worsened considerably since I was last here and the effect of my journey to the British Library and the long wait for the volumes I needed has been to make me yearn for sleep.

But I think I should record here – for Paul, who will doubtless be intrigued to listen when I return to an account of the excesses of the sybaritic southern flesh-pots – the efforts I have made so far on behalf of my friend Eliza Jekyll.

It has come home to me with increasing strength that Eliza must be in some kind of trouble. Possibly she's being blackmailed – for a distant indiscretion, which if made public now would jeopardize her future career. (I must admit, in this age of Gomorrah, I cannot imagine what this could be!) Perhaps some problem with her ex-husband has led her into a legal tangle over her Nightingale Crescent flat.

Again, it is hard to imagine what this could be. But it's equally hard to believe that a propensity such as Eliza's in her salad days could have grown to a monster of such suicidal and self-sacrificial dimensions.

I may be doubly cautious, as a Scot, when it comes to keeping a roof over my head. But it's not been in my experience, in all my years as a solicitor, that anyone renders themselves intentionally homeless.

No, there's something afoot here. I shall seek it out, for Eliza's sake and in the interests of justice.

And I must push to the back of my mind the preposterous thought that there was indeed at some time a relationship between Eliza and that – that literally indescribable creature I witnessed humping round the communal gardens last night.

Quite honestly, if there was or had been, necrophilia would have been the only word for it. For Mrs Hyde, as the wretched eighteen-year-old German girl put it, was as alarming and repellent in appearance as a ghost. This other-worldliness was what, I think, caused the bout of mass panic at Robina Sandel's. A woman going round the gardens in the wind and the rain. And she looked like death.

I was glad to meet Dr Frances Crane last night. And I'm only sorry that we didn't end up getting on as well as we began. After Robina Sandel – who is a bit of an eavesdropper and a busybody (always seems to be hanging around just when you think she's finally gone off to do something; and the bossiness, too, when she told me I had to move downstairs to the room off the kitchen, although I know Mara had arranged for me to have the light, airy room at the top!) – after Robina had settled us with a drink and a low table with some sort of expensive-looking candle on it, I was at last able to ask the doctor what if anything she knew about Eliza Jekyll. Mara had told me they were old friends, and it was funny timing, I said, that this relic of my student days turned out to live in the same street as Mara: that all these years Mara and I had corresponded from her ‘temporary' London address in Robina's house, Eliza had been there just a few doors along.

‘A lot of people seem to end up round here,' Dr Crane said, with a careful smile, as if she would guard any secrets with extreme punctiliousness. ‘It's the gardens, I suppose. There isn't another area in London with such an acreage of open green spaces.'

I had the feeling I was never going to get any further than this with Dr Frances Crane. And yet she had obviously felt an instinctive liking for me as I had for her. Perhaps the wildness of Mara and the opinionated manner of Monica Purves made me appear a more restful companion for an evening's relaxation after a day's hard work than they were likely to be; possibly, recognizing a fellow professional, she felt she could count on my discretion if the time did come to let out some facts.

I was to be disappointed again, however. Dr Crane seemed more interested in the fact that Eliza Jekyll's ex-husband was in town (which of course could be of no conceivable interest to me) than in her old friend. ‘I heard from a patient,' Frances said unhelpfully. ‘Many of the mothers of my young charges seem to have met and fallen for Ed. I sometimes wonder if the illnesses the children contract aren't in some way connected with the mothers' infatuation.' And the doctor, seeing my surprise, went on to explain that Eliza's ex-husband was a famous charmer, an occasional film director, who led a charmed life, too, by the sound of it, living off ‘projects' in development money and, often as not, the rich and famous. When in London, this paragon of virtue stays at the Portobello Hotel; and as Dr Crane has her practice in the area, she is inclined to be the first to know when he has arrived, due, as she had just explained, to the symptoms manifest in the children of single mothers living on their own, Ed's chosen love-partners.

He sounds not unlike the rapist, I thought, but kept my thoughts to myself. If I was ever going to get some insight into the unrealistic bequest Eliza Jekyll had in mind, I would do well to listen to anything anyone chose to tell me, however irrelevant.

‘So he goes to see Eliza fairly often?' I said.

‘Oh, I shouldn't think so,' Dr Crane said, returning my look of surprise. ‘He treated her monstrously at the time of the divorce.' Frances Crane sighed, then turned to look down the far end of the room, where a new arrival was
lighting a great cigar – a habit I feel strongly should be banned by Robina Sandel if she wishes to keep a pleasant establishment here.

‘Eliza's attitude to life is beyond me, I'm afraid. It's a good time since we met,' were the woman doctor's last and distinctly disapproving words on the subject. And so strong was the feeling of dislike – of dread, almost – on Frances Crane's part when talking of her old friend, that I called out for a window to be opened: ostensibly to clear the room of the fumes from the cigar, but in fact to clear the sudden thundery air between us. Eliza Jekyll would yield none of her secrets through the intermediary of the doctor, that was plain. But, in one last hope that the mystery of the contract she wished me to draw up could be elucidated, I decided to ask the doctor if she had ever had dealings with a certain Mrs Hyde.

Again, I drew a blank. Frances Crane looked up from her deep leather armchair in the bay and waved at the woman who had just come over to open the side window at my request, inviting her and her young friend to come and join us. As they settled themselves, the older and taller of the two women leaning back in a low tapestry-covered seat and propping her legs on the brass fender, Dr Crane shook her head in a dismissive, almost impatient way.

‘The woman who I hear was responsible for smashing the window of the Shade Gallery this afternoon,' I reminded her, ‘or incited the other women to smash it.'

I suppose I must sometimes come over as an insensitive person. There has been difficulty in the past, on occasions, with particularly obdurate clients – those who were manifestly holding back information from me. I have been accused of lack of tact and sympathy with their predicament. But it is a long time since I have received a snub so direct and wounding as the one delivered to me by Dr Frances Crane on the occasion of my innocent inquiries apropos Mrs Hyde. I have my book to write, and other matters to think about than the property transfers of someone with whom I have had no contact for over twenty years.
I am invited to dine – with Mara – at Eliza's on Thursday, and no doubt we will find time to discuss her request more rationally then.

Such at least were the thoughts that went through my mind after Dr Crane's glacial reply. ‘I fear, Mrs Hastie,' she said, ‘that I cannot satisfy your curiosity. My friendships do not lie in that domain.' And she turned to talk animatedly to the young woman, a landscape gardener, who had just come with the taller woman to sit down beside us. An argument on the merits and disadvantages of conservatories ensued: too hot in summer, according to the doctor, and encouraging sunstroke in some of her infant patients; and too cold in winter to be of any comfort.

I resolved not to sit silent and humiliated while this tedious conversation went on. It had been a long day, the flight from Edinburgh and the strain of parting from my children not to be discounted. And Mara – wandering out to the passage with that video camera in her hand – if I could just separate her from it tonight, we could have a cosy chat in our rooms before turning in.

But then, of course, we got our Lady Macbeth sleepwalking scene.

After it was over – and the argument had veered as sharply as the candle flame in the wind from the pros and cons of conservatories to the cons (mostly) of Mrs Hyde, it was appallingly late.

And I wouldn't have been able to have a bedside chat with Mara, anyway. I'd temporarily forgotten that Robina had moved all my things down to a poky, most unwelcoming basement room.

It seems unlikely that Jean Hastie's long – overlong – account of her days in the British Library could be of much value here. Yet, though her research on the subject of Original Sin was, of course, of paramount importance to
her, the journal, maddeningly incomplete just where the strict and meticulous attention to detail, for which the Scottish lawyer had always been remarked, would have been most appreciated, does at the same time show an undeniable urge to seek out the evil Mrs Hyde. Jean was determined – as she rather inappositely put it – to beard her in her den.

A frustrating day on Wednesday the eleventh of February prompted Jean Hastie to leave her desk by the middle of the afternoon. The books and manuscripts she most wanted were out to someone else – and for a historian in the rich field of women's studies this might well mean a further list of scholars equally impatient to study the Gospels – and an impulse to visit the London Library with a card of introduction from Robina Sandel became, as a grey, rainy twilight descended, increasingly easy to resist. The streets, where orange shop windows beckoned with displays more extravagant and sumptuous than those to be found north of the border, seemed to lie like arms a-glitter with bangles and rings, from the vantage point of the library window; and Mrs Hastie, as much lured by the prospect of vicarious shopping as the possibility of escape from an unfruitful period of research, went out to meet them with a sense both of purpose and relief. Soon, after a concentrated walk in the bustle and dazzle of Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus, she found herself, by way of a No. 15 bus, approaching the less salubrious parts of Notting Hill.

Everyone has heard their own version of the impossible coincidence, the chance meeting that it is a million to one against. A favourite of mine is the case of a friend's father who, hoping to run away from his forty-year marriage in Manchester, did just that and escaped to London and the arms of a pretty young nurse. His wife, after two months of waiting for him to return, took the train to London … and there, two streets away from the station, walked straight into him. Well, you could say Jean Hastie's luck, on that Wednesday in February, was getting near to that kind of odds. For, within minutes of leaving the bus in Portobello
Road, walking northwards, Jean had her first sighting of her prey.

There is probably as little need here to describe the streets where Eliza Jekyll's old friend Jean Hastie and her alarming new quarry Mrs Hyde were walking on that dreary afternoon as there is to transcribe Mrs Hastie's research on early Hebraic depictions of the Garden of Eden. Suffice it to say that most of the stall-holders in the market, deterred by the weather and the sparsely populated pavements, had gone home. A bread shop gave off the only warm glow, in the stretch of Portobello Road just before it ducks under the great bridge of Westway; and beyond that, by the second-hand and occult shops, a mean wind wafted nothing more satisfying than paper bags and Smartie cartons to the sleeping homeless by the entrance to the Tube.

Something seemed to press Jean Hastie to go on. She is not the sort of person, as we have seen, who would admit to instinct or premonition as a guiding force; but her entry for Wednesday the eleventh does own to a kind of ‘drivenness', making her walk, without knowing (and almost as a foreigner to the city after all these years, and certainly a stranger in these remoter regions of North Kensington) her exact location or even compass direction as she went. Golborne Road, she says, was the last time she had any bearing on her position; yet something drew her always on, so that within five or ten minutes she was neither pleased nor concerned to find herself at the edge of a vigorously rippling brown canal.

This is where the extreme unlikeliness of Jean's prey appearing comes in. And yet it did, despite the distance from the part of Notting Hill where Mrs Hyde could reasonably be expected to be seen; and, more importantly perhaps, without the hunter knowing exactly why and how she looked there.

Imagine the scene … a turning down a crumbling street leads Jean Hastie to a bridge … a bridge with two pathways, as if those crossing over must return by the other way
… and on the far side of the low, humped metal bridge, is a great red-brick warehouse, with words lit up in a neon glare in the surrounding winter gloom of water, asphalt and a grudging strip of tow-path: canalot studios. There is no sound, apart from the ripple of water. Other warehouse fronts, grey and dingy yellow, stand by the studios and front a line of water that looks as thirsty for bodies as any French river in the age of suicides. Yet no one lurks, waiting for the moment to run out … only Jean Hastie stands there, on the bridge, looking down. For, outside the main doorway of the red-brick giant, a woman is rustling in a rubbish bin. You can't hear her, because of the water … and, too, because of a blast of rock music from the studios as the main door swings open and a group of polo-necked young men come out … and by the time they have crossed her path and the glimpse of the white-marbled fountain and palm-filled interior has faded again with the bobbing to of the door, it is too late. The canal is as empty and as dead as ever, the quick whispering of the water no more than an illusion of depth and changingness. On the far side of the warehouses, where Jean goes as she runs over the bridge to catch the woman, Harrow Road lies in a blur of TV shops and Chinese takeaways. And here, as if luck had come to Jean Hastie and was determined to stick to her for the rest of the day, walks Mrs Hyde in a street as rough and garish and abandoned to the poor as that great warehouse behind her is a haven for creativity and wealth.