The Crooked House (21 page)

The
pub was packed, she could see that from the road. Light and noise and people spilling over into the dark yard and along the quay where the big boats that had come all the way upriver after the race were moored three deep. Inside, someone was playing an accordion and a song eddied. She stopped.

She’d found a note from Paul on the bedside table. For a while she hadn’t been able to focus on it, Kay’s voice still in her head, and the buzz in her veins.

See you at the pub. Walking down there
. No kiss, no love. No exclamation marks.

From inside the pub came the sharp rapping sound of someone banging on a table and a shout, calling for order. A jeering set up in response then another ragged chorus.

Up in the village the police were talking to Gina.

From the opposite side of the road Alison had seen them as she walked past the bus stop with the little square beyond it where the buses turned, or had always used to. The bus shelter was so vandalised and tumbledown it occurred to her, before she saw Gina, that perhaps the buses had stopped coming
here. They’d been antiques back then, with coarse velveteen seats and roll-down windows and a driver seated high above a big steering wheel. Perhaps it wasn’t worth anyone’s while to come here any more, even if tonight, for one night of the year, Saltleigh was busy.

That was what she remembered, listening to the noise from the pub, when she’d been eight, nine, ten: barge-match day had been carnival and sports day and speeches all rolled into one, cars coming down through the village and the light and smell of beer spilling out of the pub.

From the far pavement she’d seen the car first, then Sarah Rutherford and a male officer, standing with a smaller figure between them. Then the figure banged a fist down on the car’s roof and she’d recognised it as Gina immediately. There was a murmur from Sarah Rutherford, a soft, pained sound and Alison had hurried on past, just glancing back to look for confirmation that it was who she thought it was, looking for the pushchair or the child. Seeing nothing but Gina’s head turning, alerted by her movement, she had kept on going.

Leaning against the shed Alison got out her phone. No one was looking at her. With half an eye she monitored the wandering crowd, listening for Roger Carter’s booming voice, looking for Morgan’s shiny hair. Looking for Paul.

If Alison closed her eyes now he would be there. His eyes that were somewhere between green and grey, the vertical line beside his mouth. She’d never had that before: before if she’d been asked to remember a face, the face even of someone she’d kissed and touched and wanted, she couldn’t have done it. She remembered trying once or twice, in wonderment, and drawing a blank – the therapist would probably have had a theory for why that was. A decade of shying away from remembering a smile. Joe, his face gone.

They must be inside.

Saw you by the bus stop
, she tapped in the message on the
phone, to Gina.
What was that about? What did they ask you?
Even before she’d sent it, it seemed, the phone shivered in her hand, a reply coming in. Only it wasn’t from Gina, it was from Kay.

I meant it
, read the message.
You just have to say and I can get there, borrow a car, get on a train
. Inside Alison it pulsed hot, the last resort. If only it was that easy, just to reach out to Kay and say, save me.
You can’t do it on your own.
She put the phone back in her pocket and walked through the crowd.

The din hit her at the door, the heat, and the smell, sweat, beer, diesel. More sweat. Men. The lights were bright but it was so crowded she didn’t feel exposed: the man right in front of her in the doorway just shifted to let her in, not even breaking in his conversation, pint glass rising to his lips, talking about tides. ‘Better shift yer car,’ he said, elbowing the man beside him. ‘Highest one of the year tomorrow.’ Alison remembered it all. A big-bellied man with a beard in a spattered blue smock standing at the bar beside a tarnished silver trophy was some way through a rambling account of something that happened long ago, safely distant, the Dunkirk evacuations. People were talking through it steadily and she couldn’t tell if the trophy was his, and he’d won.

She remembered the heat of the packed bodies, the same faces coming back from other estuaries and inlets, a bit older, more battered, like gypsies. She pulled her scarf around her face and stepped to one side of the door.

Kay would come, if she asked, and then what?

‘So why haven’t you been answering my calls?’ she had said, blunt, as Alison sat up in bed in the darkened room. ‘Has he brainwashed you or something?’

‘You mean Paul?’ She felt slightly sick, something in Kay’s voice warned her.

‘I’ve spoken to that Rosa,’ Kay said then. ‘She told me all about him. Your Paul. He doesn’t like me much, does he?’

And
now in the pub at the memory Alison suddenly felt hot, stifled; she tugged at the scarf. She heard people talking off to one side of her, men’s unfamiliar voices and a broad back blocking her view. They were talking about Stephen Bray. Her head buzzing with other things she tried to connect, to make sense of. The room was a blur of faces. Where was Paul?

‘If it was booze, maybe. But they say he hit his head on something.’ The voice was disbelieving. ‘On what? Nothing out there but mud. Nothing to brain yourself on between here and the power station.’ A murmur. ‘Oh yeah. And that. That place. And what was he doing there, anyway?’

Hit his head. Her stomach clenched against the smell of beer and diesel, the heat and the droning voice made her queasy.

‘Paul knows who you are.’ The words in her ear in the dark hotel room had set her head spinning: she’d braced herself against the pillows.

‘And you,’ Alison said, only then she found she couldn’t say any more.
You know who I am.

Kay’s voice was gentler then. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘A while back, someone said something, there was a rumour. People make things up, they get things wrong. First it was a plane crash, then a pile-up, a break-in gone wrong. A fire.’

‘Did people know or not?’ Alison spoke stubbornly, but she felt choked.

‘You mean at the office?’ Kay said, uneasy. ‘It’s an old story, details get lost. Some were interested, some weren’t. Mostly people had stopped thinking about it.’ There was a pause, and Alison imagined going back to the office, walking in, pulling off her scarf, sitting down at her desk. It looked impossible, a world seen down the wrong end of a telescope.

Kay went on. ‘I only knew the outline. But it wasn’t any of my business. I didn’t know …’ And she took a breath. ‘I didn’t know it happened … there.’

‘But
Paul knew.’ Alison stated it patiently, not a question. ‘Paul knew it all.’

She moved against the wall of the saloon bar, so that the big beergut outline of the man who’d talked about Bray half-hid her from the rest of the room. The speech-maker was building to a climax, talking about the winner in a voice half resentful, half admiring. Something about taking risks, nerves of steel. A tall spare weathered man with hair springing up from a high forehead stood beside him, so still, so camouflaged in battered clothes faded to the same shades of tan as his skin that he was almost invisible. Bob Argent, who’d run the other boats down.

‘Apparently’ – Kay’s voice was level, cool – ‘apparently it was a preoccupation of his. Knowing Morgan, and all. According to
Rosa
,’ and Alison registered the dislike in her voice, ‘according to Rosa it was what got him started on massacres. And survivors, of course. He wasn’t at that launch by accident, when he met you.
Rosa
kept dropping hints and … I’d just had enough. I cornered her yesterday and made her tell me.’

‘Rosa.’ It was the way she’d said it. ‘He … did he and Rosa …’ Rosa was three, four years younger than she was. That long dark hair, streaked with gold. What did Morgan think of Rosa?

Kay sighed. ‘I don’t think it lasted very long,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘Jeez. I didn’t want to have that conversation with her. He was … he didn’t actually teach her but she met him through … well.’ Another sigh. ‘Roy Saunders was her supervisor, that’s how they met. I bet she thought she was being all grown up, you know. Those things don’t last long.’

Alison thought of Rosa’s slyness at the party, slipping away as Alison turned to look up at Paul, that first time.
I thought you wanted to be alone.
And now she’s wondering if she did the right thing.
Take care
. Her stomach turned.

‘Are you all right?’ said Kay, into the silence. ‘You don’t
sound all right.’ Her voice was tense. ‘What a mindfuck, though.’ Awe, turning to fear, crept into her voice. ‘Being back there.’

‘So Rosa knew Saunders, too?’ said Alison. ‘Their little gang.’ She took a breath. ‘You remember that gun I told you about? Paul takes it everywhere with him. He brought it here and showed it to me. He told me it was Saunders who gave it to him.’

Kay made a disbelieving noise. ‘That’s weird,’ she said. ‘Christ. Men and guns. I always wondered about Saunders, all that military history shit. Maybe he’s – maybe it’s a homoerotic thing.’

She laughed, but her heart wasn’t in it and Alison said nothing. Even down the hissing line Kay seemed to know. ‘Something’s up, isn’t it? Is there anyone there you can talk to? Who knows … what happened?’

‘I’m all right,’ said Alison. She didn’t feel all right. In the darkened room she felt like a madwoman; it was in the air she breathed here; it was in every face she saw; it was outside the window. She didn’t want to tell Kay about Gina: something told her Gina wouldn’t put Kay’s mind at rest. ‘There’s a policewoman from back then. Sarah Rutherford.’ She said the name for comfort. ‘I made contact.’

‘Uh-huh.’ She heard Kay process that. ‘And him? Paul? Are you going to tell him, now?’

‘I don’t know what I’ll do,’ she said, grim. ‘Shit. I don’t want to be anyone’s case study.’

‘I expect it helped,’ said Kay drily, ‘that you don’t exactly look like Shrek.’ A pause. ‘I’m sorry,’ she went on, and she did sound it. ‘What I mean is, I expect he … it’s also possible he … he’s really into you,’ she said, grudgingly. ‘I mean you’re … you’re …’

I’m what? thought Alison. What am I? Sexy? Beautiful? Interesting? I’m Alison from accounts, I keep my head down.

Kay let out an angry sigh. ‘What a fuck-up,’ she said. ‘If he loved you, how could he take you back there?’

In
the pub now Alison stood with her back to the wall as though on the edge of a cliff. In the bedroom she’d leaned against the headboard and willed the world to stop spinning. How? How? The question wouldn’t go away. ‘Perhaps he … perhaps he wants to …’ She stopped.

‘Perhaps he wants to make you better?’ said Kay, gruffly.

‘Is that what you think?’ Alison couldn’t bear how forlorn her voice sounded.

There was a long, long pause and when Kay spoke she sounded tired. ‘I hardly know him,’ she said with finality. ‘It’s what you think that matters.’

And now in front of her in the crowded gaseous air of the public bar the groupings shifted and a woman turned, a woman Alison knew. Not knew, really; a woman she’d seen before, and recently. Beside her more people were crowding in through the door, the woman met her eye and then someone else was between them but something had already clicked into place. She was the district nurse Alison had seen coming out of Susan Price’s house, boxes of medicine on the back seat of her car.

‘Oh God.’

She heard the words whispered with distaste almost in her ear, and recognising the voice Alison shrank back. She could see Roger’s hand on his wife’s shoulder, pale reddish hairs on the knuckles. It was Lucy Carter she’d heard speak: now she was looking down at the handbag she clutched. They were less than a metre from her. Alison waited, but Morgan wasn’t behind them. She peered.

‘And the winner is Bob Argent!’ came the announcement and she saw the tarnished little trophy raised over the heads at the bar, saw the weathered face of the tall bargeman still immobile, unsurprised. ‘Mr Argent. And the
Lady Maud
.’ And under cover of the ragged applause, cheers mixed with some barracking sounds, she ducked behind the Carters and was back out of the door.

Her
phone blipped in her pocket as she sidestepped, out of the light, and she looked at it. Two messages, from Gina. She opened the first: all it said was
Ma
. She looked up again, puzzling, focusing only gradually on what was out there. Two figures stood at the river’s edge with their arms around each other, both tall. The door swung and the beam of light broadened, she saw the gleam of blond but by then she’d have known Morgan. The man was only an inch or so taller. Paul.

The phone sat heavy in her hand but Alison didn’t look back down, she was watching Morgan raise her hands to take Paul’s face between them. Watching her kiss him.

Alison turned and stumbled. Someone’s hand was at her waist to stop her going over but she didn’t look, she pulled away and was back in the pub. She stepped to one side of the door, and inside her it expanded, under the lights, in the din, her head hammered with what she’d seen. No. Why.
No
. If she had a gun she would shoot them.

The hand was on her waist still. ‘You all right?’ It was Danny Watts.

Say nothing. Give nothing away. But when she opened her mouth she gasped like a fish. Stopped herself. ‘Fine,’ she said. His face was close, his eyes were very bright blue in the dark skin, she could see his soft face beginning to weather, to seam. Water gypsy. Her thoughts were scrambled.

Danny stood between her and the door, looking at her, his jaw set – something about her seemed to be making him angry, but the hand was still there. Behind him the door banged and she saw the gleam of a blond head: Morgan strode past them into the crowded bar not looking right or left. Her face was like thunder. As if she felt the glare Lucy Carter turned from where she stood behind her husband at the bar, and saw her daughter.

Ma
, said the message.
Ma
?

She
looked at the phone, not caring what Danny thought of her, and there was another message.
May’s run off
.