The Green Flash (16 page)

‘Well,' I said, ‘you don't need to worry just yet. That is, if you can bear to take the opinion of one man.'

She kissed me. ‘Do you know in France they call a nightmare a
cauchemar
? I often think it should be translated as bed-mare.'

‘I know one or two women like that,' I said.

She laughed, comforted, and began to dress.

If I'd had a conscience this time, it was not about another woman. In fact, I'd had only ten days in Barbados. The previous ten had been taken up visiting various factories on behalf of Kilclair Ltd and in getting the venture on the move. Derek didn't have the patience or the talent to go around, and Van Morris hadn't the appearance, though he was fine for delivering the goods. Once the thing got going it could be slotted into my ordinary routine.

For my ordinary routine meant a good bit of travelling, even just round England. At Shona's I now needed two more men, and we took them on. John Marks and Leo Longford were both young and eager, Marks having been in advertising, Longford with Elizabeth Arden.

In spite of our early success, the Shona line didn't really quite take off in America as we'd expected; it became a goodish market, and after a year or so it cleared the initial outlay; but the figures never went over the top. Shona never came up with any suggestion that my quarrel with Marini had a bearing on these results, and probably it didn't, because once a thing is in the shops it stands or falls by the quality of the stuff and the way it is put over in advertising. But sometimes peculiar things happened, and I wondered.

About this time I fell into the habit of spending one evening a week with Shona without the bedroom as the ultimate end in view. Sometimes we went to a foreign film but more often were just together in her flat. We'd eat a lazy meal and talk a bit or read, or she would play the piano, which she did well if you accepted that her range was limited. A bit of the simpler Bach or Scarlatti, or more often people like Scott Joplin, who was just then coming back into favour.

In my travels in England I'd been to Leeds a dozen times since I took on the job but had never gone to Quemby. There was nothing there for me. But one thing and another now made me think about a call. Meeting Shona's father. And meeting my own cousin; weakening of the old Abden resolve, so to speak. But the real reason – was it excuse? – was this fencing business.

I had been fretted to find myself outpointed by relative beginners, and particularly by people like Shona and Erica Lease, who were women and therefore I should have been disadvantaged and yet could more or less pick me off at will. At Loretto I'd fancied my chance as a fencer. I suppose the problem in Kensington was that I was too big-headed to take lessons from the various experts there and thought I could get on without them. I couldn't – or I didn't quickly enough. I knew that in my old room in Burton House, Quemby, there should be three books on fencing I'd bought when I was about eighteen, all by a chap called Roger Crosnier, and called
Fencing with the Foil, Fencing with the Epée
, and
Fencing with the Sabre
. I'd tried to buy them in London recently and was told they were OP. At the time – when I'd first bought them and read them – I'd thought them good. If it could be done, it would be nice to improve my style without lining up some tutor.

It was in September when I was next in Leeds, and I thought whether to call when they were all out and bully a maid into letting me into my old room. But it was nearly eight years since I'd been back – in these days there might well not even
be
a maid – and anyway one did not have to act as if one were scared of the family. Chances were by the eighteenth of September the two lumpish girls would be back at their academies, and if I called in the early afternoon old Kingsley would be at his office in the city wrangling with contractual torts. That left only Mother. I could, I thought, face a brief and solitary encounter with Mother.

It was a showery day, and I drove out in my new Aston Martin DB6, a car I'd discussed with Malcolm and bought earlier in the year. It had the Vantage engine and a manual gear-shift, which was so much faster as a car and sweeter to drive than the automatic version, except that it had a pig of a clutch. I wondered if Mother remembered the days when we used to have hairy cars. Old Kingsley, though rich enough, usually drove a Rover not much younger than himself.

Quemby is halfway between Leeds and Harrogate and just off the A658. The Kingsley house was about a mile from the village in a group of six large houses built probably in the twenties. The fat car tyres crunched over the loose shingle of the drive as I drew up in front of the oak door with its stained-glass panels and hanging lantern. A feature of the house was a big fan window on the first floor which lit up the hall and staircase. It had stopped raining, but the heavy beech trees dripped into little pools formed in the drive. I saw there was a Volvo in the double garage, which was a hopeful sign.

I rang the bell, which went ding-dong. Somehow you would have thought they would have grown out of that. A dog barked.

A lady in her early fifties came to the door. A green flowered apron over a pink silk and lace afternoon frock. She'd put on weight since I saw her last.

‘Hullo, Mother,' I said.

She swallowed a couple of pebbles, stared at me as if I were a ghoul.

‘David!' she said, her expression tentatively changing for the better. ‘What a
surprise
! Whatever brings you here?'

‘Passing,' I said. ‘Thought I'd call.'

‘Come
in
! You gave me quite a
shock
. I was expecting someone else. At least, I thought they were early but I thought it must be them.' She stood aside and I went in.

I looked round the hall. Nothing much changed. I kissed her. She was using L'Interdit.

‘Come in here,' she said, leading the way into what I suppose Kingsley would call the lounge.

‘Ah,' I said, ‘you've had it redecorated. And that's a nice Georgian table.'

‘Yes, Kenneth and I picked it up near Knaresborough. Got it very cheap. Of course it was in bad condition. He put a lot of work in on it. Kenneth is very clever with his hands.'

‘And a new dog,' I said, as a terrier came waggling in.

‘Yes, that's Sandy,' said Mother, standing cautiously in the doorway. ‘Perry got a canker in his ear.'

Extra weight made her more Jewish-looking: it was in the flared nostrils, the eyelids, the curve of the lips. Still very handsome but no longer the woman I had once been in love with. And the expression in her fine eyes was not really the expression for a woman regarding her first-born.

‘Have I come at a bad time?'

‘No, not really, David. Pleased to
see
you. As a matter of fact I have three ladies coming for bridge today, but they shouldn't be here for half an hour yet. I was just – cutting some sandwiches.'

I said: ‘ Do you still have a maid?'

‘Only in the mornings.'

‘Then I'll come in the kitchen while you finish off.'

‘Oh, no, I couldn't let you do
that
! Are you staying long? You could stay the
night
. Kenneth will be back at six.'

‘I have to be on my way. Actually I came just to pick up one or two of my things.'

‘Things?' she said. ‘What things? There wasn't much … you didn't leave much behind.'

‘Chiefly books,' I said, propelling her into the kitchen. ‘ No, I didn't leave a lot behind. I didn't gather much moss.'

She stood over the table. Smoked salmon and brown bread and butter. She made a move or two to continues but her fingers were a bit of a jumble. She looked at the pink carnation I was wearing.

‘How are the girls?' I said.

‘Oh,
fine
! Edna's the brainy one. We hope she'll get into Oxford and read Law. But of course it's early days yet. Marjorie is the pretty one, but –'

‘Takes after you, I suppose.'

She didn't smile. ‘ I was going to say, but has no head for schooling. Perhaps she's like me in that too.'

‘And me,' I said.

‘Oh, you've a
good
head, David; always have had. The trouble was you wouldn't
use
it. Least, not in the – the ways you should have …'

I patted Sandy, who had followed us. ‘ Thanks for the letters when I was in jail. Did I reply? I don't remember.'

She seemed shocked that I could mention it so casually. ‘No.'

‘Sorry. It was just the feeling from what you wrote that you'd given me up as a bad job.'

‘There was no reason to think
that
! But Kenneth felt it was such a pity, with all your advantages …'

‘Yes, I was never one you could make up a hard-luck story about. The judge thought the same.'

She said: ‘This perfumery firm you're working for. Shona Ltd. Are you doing well?'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm
glad
. I've read about this Mme Shona. What is she like?'

‘All right.'

‘I expect she's like Coco Chanel, isn't she? I once read a book about Coco Chanel. She was always philandering with some titled person or other.'

‘Well, it can happen.'

‘What's your position in the firm?'

‘Sales manager.'

‘So you see something of her?'

‘From time to time.' I said: ‘ Look, you want to finish those sandwiches, so how about me going upstairs and seeing if I can find what I want while you fix them. You don't need to show me the way –'

‘Oh, but I do,' she said with a defensive look. ‘The – the girls often have people here, so we decided to turn your bedroom into a second guest room. We've – had it redecorated and refurnished. We didn't think it likely you'd want to come back …'

I said lightly: ‘And the bits and pieces? Were they thrown out?'

‘Of
course
not! At least, nothing of any
value
. You know the loft?'

‘Yes.'

‘Up there there's a tin box. It belonged to Kenneth's father. It's got JKK on the outside. Everything of yours, was put in there. Probably any of your books –'

‘I'll go up and see while you're organizing the feast. Coming, boy?' I said to the dog, who was looking expectant.

‘Don't forget,' she called. ‘The ladder pulls down, you know. Perhaps I'd better show you –'

‘Nonsense. I remember it.'

‘I can make you coffee if you want. The kettle's always hot on the Aga. Or a drink …'

‘Coffee I'll have. In ten minutes.'

The house had a peculiar smell; houses do; this one was reminiscent of those last years at home; Mansion polish, new chintz, vacuumed dust, central heating; not at all like my first home in Leeds. Only the Aga was the same. Mother was a great believer in them. God knows, you'd think she might have changed her preferences. The ladder pulled down and I went up. Sandy whined at the bottom so I went back and carried him up with me. He scrabbled at the edge and then launched himself into the roof; more happily after I had found the light.

The metal trunk was a big one, and you wondered how many trees had been cut down to provide all the wills, the deeds and the rest of the legal wastepaper that had once been in there. The three books were at the top; I fished them out and put them on one side to carry down, fingered through the rest of my stuff. Mostly useless: a cricket bat, a tennis racquet now warped, a certificate I'd won for – of all things – fencing, some other books, gym shoes, motoring gloves. I took the gloves.

There were things in it not mine – a photograph album which must have belonged to the Kingsley family. A thin folder with a flap – inside some newspaper cuttings. I began to read them, at first not realizing.

The inquest was resumed yesterday on the death of Mr Stewart Kilclair Abden, aged 43, of 121 Avenue Road, Horsforth, who died at his house on the third inst. Mrs Rachel Abden (31), in describing the quarrel which had developed on the evening of that day, said her husband had been drinking before he came home and was worried about money. Their eleven-year-old son, David, was present, and Abden began to threaten him. A struggle ensued, in the course of which Abden fell backwards, turning as he did so, and injured himself fatally by striking his head on the bar of the kitchen stove …

Fold the news cutting and slide it back into the folder. ‘Death by Misadventure', that's what they'd said. He'd fallen forward against the damned Aga and cracked his damned skull. Nothing peculiar about that, was there? For Christ's sake, that was the way it had happened.

Only you'd think Mother would have been put off Agas forever, not shoving another in her new house.

Of course it hadn't ended there. Some of the cess press, as Shona called them, had had more to say. One here: ‘Baronet's brother dies in kitchen brawl.' That was ingenious – brought to mind in a single headline a picture of aristocrats in a saturnalia of debauchery between the fridge and the cooker.

Pictures too. Somebody'd been around buying up old snapshots.

When I got down the sandwiches were done. I helped her bear them in and cover them with Cleanfoil, flip the card table up. In spite of becoming fatter she still had wonderful legs.

She said: ‘You used to play bridge, David.'

‘Still do when I've the time.'

‘You were only nine when you began. Remember? With those neighbours. What was –'

‘Waters. It was family bridge but a grounding. I made good use of it the last two years I was in school.'

‘You shouldn't have, you know. That's been the trouble all along …'

‘I've been a write-off for you, haven't I, Mother dear. But you always used to stand up for me in the old days.'

Faint beads of sweat showing through the powder on her forehead. Hair still as black as ever; quite hard to see the touching up.