The Dirty Duck (11 page)

He looked again over the rail, and raised his hand in a sort of salute and wondered if those rather plump-looking people sitting either side of her, craning their necks upward, were a few of the Randolph Biggets. When he saw her cup her hands round her mouth, prepared to shout over the surge
and sweep of heaven knew how many hundreds of voices, Melrose slid down in his seat. He blessed the houselights, which had just dimmed.

 • • • 

It was good, but then was the Royal Shakespeare Company ever anything else? Hamlet was not overly melancholic after the opening scene, Gertrude was wonderfully lascivious, old Claudius was a bit more sympathetic than usual. A little hard to have sympathy for Claudius. By the time the intermission arrived, everyone's nerves were on edge, on stage and off. Melrose was not looking forward to the ambush in the bar.

 • • • 

Since he had had the foresight to order his brandy before the play began, he didn't have to join the general crush, but managed to retreat back into a corner. There was a bow-tie bobbing out there somewhere; he got occasional flashes of Harvey, who was finally upon him.

“Can you feature it? All the time we were in that church—there she was lying out back.” Harvey slashed his finger along his neck.

Rather tastelessly, thought Melrose, who inquired, “Did you know the lady well?”

“Hell, no. Just we were on this tour together.” He shook his head sadly. “Poor Gwennie. Man, you could've knocked me over with a feather.” Harvey polished off his beer as the lights blinked. “See you. I'm in the middle and I hate crawling over people.”

Melrose thought he was safe for two minutes, but one was never safe from Agatha, who was bulldozing her way toward him. She could sniff him out as a terrier could smell a fox gone to earth. “Melrose!”

“Hullo, Agatha. Fancy meeting you here. How did you ever find the place?” She just stood there, looking horribly pleased with herself, and clearly waiting for him to ask her why. “Have you worked through the reasons for Hamlet's delay, or what?”

“You will never
guess
who's here!”

“You're dead right. Would you like a brandy? Or must you get back to the Biggets?
They,
I take it, are here.” His lack of enthusiasm, he hoped, was noticeable.

“Close your eyes!”

“Close—? For heaven's sakes. No.”

The pout started at her mouth and seemed to spread all over her face.

“Really, Agatha—” Whatever warning he meant to level at her was immediately stopped as he stared over her shoulder.

There was Vivian Rivington.

The only one of the three not perturbed by this meeting was Agatha,
who stood there looking pleased as punch and taking full credit for Vivian Rivington's magical appearance as if she'd just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

Vivian herself seemed both pleased and disconcerted, seeming not to know what to do with her hands.

Melrose solved her problem by embracing her. “My dear Vivian. What in the
hell
are you doing in Stratford? How did you get here? Why aren't you in Italy?”

Agatha answered for Vivian as she did for everyone. “She motored here from Long Pidd. Said when Ruthven told her where we were, she just decided to come along. She said—”

“—and she only speaks Italian now, and she's hired you as interpreter. I would appreciate it, Agatha, if—”

“The lights!” said Agatha, as they dimmed to announce the beginning of the next act. Afraid she might miss a minute of something she'd paid to see, Agatha had already started plowing her way back through the crowd.

“Let's get out of here, Vivian. Let's go over to the Dirty Duck and have a drink and a talk.”

“But the play—” Vivian started to say.

“I'll tell you how it comes out.”

 • • • 

Since nearly everyone in town was watching the second part of
Hamlet,
the Dirty Duck was not as crowded as usual.

He set their drinks on the table. “It's been three years.”

Three years, and this wasn't the Vivian he had grown so used to. That one hadn't looked like this one. Where were the subdued twin-sets and skirts, the unrouged lips? The hair was the same autumnal brown with reddish highlights, but she had never worn it messed about on the top of her head that way, curls hanging down. He supposed it was devilishly fashionable. And she had never worn such a blinding shade of green before. Her dress was low-cut and clingy.

“Three years, yes.” She took a packet of cigarettes from a purse of silver scales. “I came back to see about selling the cottage in Long Piddleton.”

“Sell? Why?”

“I'm getting married.”

The match burnt his fingers as he stared at her. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Well, where is he, then?”

“In Italy.”

“What the hell's he doing there?”

“He's Italian.” Short pause. “Oh, don't look like that. He's not a gigolo. He's not after my money.”

Vivian had rather a lot of it.

“So you met him in Naples. How disgustingly romantic.”

She shook her head. “Venice. And it
was
romantic.
Is,
I mean.”

“Aha! Indecision.”

She laughed. “No, not really. But why are you disturbed? After all,
you
never wanted to marry me.”

Vivian's directness caught him off-guard. Was it something she'd picked up in Italy? The thing that got him about her was that she was a genuinely modest woman who could be, at the same time, straightforward. There was hardly any room to move in with Vivian. Nothing to stumble over, searching one another out in the dark. No play of sun and shadow. Vivian stood in the bright light of day.

“What are you smiling about?”

He quickly changed his expression.

“And what on earth are you doing in Stratford in July? You never went anywhere in summer, much less somewhere in summer, much less somewhere touristy.”

“I still don't. But don't you remember—” He stopped suddenly. Of course Vivian would remember Richard Jury. More to the point, Jury would certainly remember
her.
Melrose was certain Jury's interest had been more than professional. And now there seemed to be this Kennington woman lurking somewhere offstage . . .

“Remember what?”

“Nothing, nothing. I came because had I not Agatha would have had her American cousins trooping through Ardry End.”

Vivian laughed. “You've always been too nice to her, Melrose. And she's always been perfectly dreadful in return.”

“I'm
not
nice to her, and it's interesting having someone perfectly dreadful about. You can practice reactions on them. It's sort of like being goalie in a soccer game. Anyway, it's wonderful to see you.”

“Are you sure?”

Her eyes actually seemed to be twinkling at him over the rim of her glass. What was she drinking? Naturally, Campari and lime. Didn't they all, over there? He knew he was irrationally irritated with Vivian. Why had she come back
now,
all Gucci'd up in that glittery green dress, silky hair dripping down the sides of her face like an Italian ice, and probably saying awful things like
Ciao? . . .

“When are you leaving?” he asked.

“Well,
thanks.
Might I just finish my drink first?” She looked at him again with cool amusement. “I'm picking up Franco at Heathrow tomorrow. He's coming in from Rome.”

Franco. Heathrow. Rome. It all sounded so terribly international.

“And then . . . well, if you're going to be here, I'd like you to meet him—”

“Do you want the wedding at Ardry End? It's probably big enough to hold his entire family.”

“That's nice of you, Melrose.” She still smiled. “Agatha will like him. He's a count.”

“A
count?”
Really, this was too much.

“They have titles over there too; you're not the only one.”

“I am not titled. I dropped all of that nonsense years ago. Had I known
that
was what you were after, maybe I'd have hung on to the earl and viscount and the rest of it longer.”

She looked away. “Don't be absurd. I'm not ‘after' anything, and you know it. He just happens to be a count, that's all.”

“No one just
happens
to be a count.” All Melrose could visualize was this black-caped stranger. “Can he see his reflection in a mirror?”

Now Vivian was angry, and rightly so, he thought. “Oh, for God's sake . . .”

Melrose slid down in his seat, grabbing at his neck, just to annoy her more.

Then he thought of the look on Sergeant Lasko's face. That's all Stratford needed at the moment. More bloodletting.

F
or a seventeen-year-old, Stratford-upon-Avon was not exactly Arcadia. No card clubs, no discos, no movies, not even any streetcorner activity. But Honey Belle Farraday could find the action if you put her down in a field of cows.

Tonight she was swinging down Wood Street as if it were the Vegas strip. And when Honey Belle swung, she swung—hips packed into Sassoon jeans; breasts, not exactly hidden beneath a white Indian cotton top about as opaque as a fogged-over pane; bangle bracelets, loop earrings, and gold chains. Underneath it all she was stark. Honey Belle went in only for necessities.

Stratford. What a one-horse town. Nothing to do but boring plays and boring sightseeing. You couldn't even get a decent tan lying around the Hilton pool. But she still lay around it, because it gave her a chance to show off the white swimsuit she'd bought in Paris—nothing more than a few sateen patches held together by string—that old James thought was scandalous. Who did he think
he
was kidding? It gave Honey Belle a real kick to think her own mother was jealous of her. Nearly killed her after she found her and old James in the big bedroom at home, and Honey Belle only wearing those flimsy babydolls—well, they hadn't
done
anything, really. But you'd never convince Amelia Blue of that.

She crossed over the roundabout and passed the Golden Egg and looked in the window at people stuffing themselves with eggs and pancakes. Of course, she didn't
eat.
You couldn't eat and have the kind of body she had, she thought, passing fingers with plum-painted nails over her washboard tummy. Flat. The television commercial for some Chinese food jingled in her mind:
“Take care of your beautiful bod-y; take care of your beautiful
bod!”
Boy, and didn't she ever take care of her bod. She sighed with pleasure at the mental picture of herself, as two women with shopping bags passed her. They must have been forty-five, fifty, she thought, looking after them. She wondered how anyone could live that long and not kill themselves.

Honey Belle was scared of only one thing: losing her looks, getting old and wrinkled. She could see her own mother's looks beginning to erode, though she had to admit Amelia Blue did a pretty good job of taking care of herself. Thank God Amelia Blue at least once had been a real looker; and thank God, too, her own daddy had been tall and blond, a real lady-killer. She guessed Amelia couldn't stand it anymore, being second-best to his latest tart, and had finally had to dump him. Honey Belle giggled as she wondered if her mother knew just how much of a daddy's girl Honey Belle had been.

She passed the alleylike opening of a small street crowded with little shops, thinking how they'd kill her—Poppa James and Amelia Blue—if they really
knew
about her, and what she was doing for the money to buy stuff like gold chains and Sassoon jeans. Dancing in a topless bar. Posing for a photographer friend who'd tried a hell of a lot more with her than just taking pictures. It wasn't the sex Honey Belle liked; it was the power. My God, the power it gave her over men. Being up there on a platform with those blue and pinky lights splashing over her; or posing on couches and cushions in those
positions.
It wasn't the sex, no, it wasn't that. She hated actually
doing
it. It was the making-men-think-about-it. Think about doing it with
her.
What made her own body tingle was watching them watching her, was thinking about the men who bought those pictures raking her with their eyes. Her career was pretty well set. When James talked about school, about her grades, she nearly laughed in his face. She was either going to be a model or it was going to be movies. . . . Almost as if the thought of all those movie producers after her had taken some concrete shape, she heard feet behind her.

Honey Belle stopped in a dull pool of light outside a small bookstore and lit a cigarette. The thin stream of smoke rose upward, evaporating into the blue phosphorescence of the streetlamp. She smiled. What she was actually doing was stopping the sound of her own clogs to see if the feet behind her stopped too. Because Honey Belle could tell when
she
was being followed even if you dropped her into the middle of a regiment of marching feet. And she was right. She had not seen, she had sensed, back there in that narrow alley of shops, a shadowy form, just standing, looking in a window. Until whoever it was saw her. And that was enough. Still
smoking her cigarette she walked on. There was this underground place near the train station where she'd heard there was dancing, drinks, pot, and maybe even a couple of snorts of coke. Honey Belle could sniff out the action—she giggled at her own little joke, swinging along the walk.

But the giggle caught in her throat as the hand clamped down on her mouth and she felt the breath on her neck.

Oh, shit!
was her last thought:
Come all the way to England just to get raped! And who'd'a thought it in this shitty little place
—but in those few seconds while her little brain was still connecting with the world beyond her body, she also thought, Why not? It was the kind of sex where you didn't have to do anything—and then there was that cold thing on her skin, her India shirt just gone through and everything else like a knife through butter.