Perfectly Pure and Good Read online

  There were a few new marks on the clean paint by the kitchen door. Spilt coffee, tribute to Sarah’s domestic carelessness, at odds with her flair for making things beautiful, translating junk into elegance. Coffee stains, or wine, not blood. Malcolm was beginning to understand that he might be stuck with the memory of the blood, however much he encouraged it to fade. Each time he came here he felt as if he was retracing his own fleeting steps, following the dog up to this apartment where she had led him twelve months ago, inspired by her mischievous curiosity. Disobedient dog, running amok at the end of a late-night run, cannoning into the insecure front door, up the stairs, leaving him no choice but to follow, cursing her.

  No, don’t remember it. Memories were for old men. Past accidents, old horrors, should be recognized, of course, put into the scheme of things so that life could continue as soon as possible. Too much analysis only increased the weight of the baggage and both he and Sarah carried plenty of that already. Malcolm sighed, resigned to a mental ritual. OK, run through the facts on record, including those which embarrassed him personally, as if explaining them briefly to a stranger, then put them back on the shelf where they belonged. It was his way of dealing with it. So. Charles Tysall, Dad’s super-rich handsome bastard of a client, got involved with Sarah, whom he met through Dad’s firm. No, correction, not involved, obsessed. Had this fixation, see, with red hair. Sarah gives him the cold-shoulder, so he breaks in here one night, waits for her. There is a fight in which a large mirror is broken. Sarah falls on the glass, has lots of nasty little injuries all over, though not on her face, God knows how. Led by his daft dog, he, Malcolm, had intervened and pursued the attacker out into the park, and this was the bit he most loathed to recall. Bringing the man down like a Rottweiler after cattle, hitting him far too hard and too long for the purpose, and, oddly, enjoying it. Malcolm hated violence, had never known he was so capable of it.

  It had been a cruel way to bring Sarah into his life, he would concede for the record, but since he loved her with every ounce of his sinewy frame, the means of this savage introduction were less important than the ends.

  The dog’s lead was in the kitchen. Malcolm found it and then took a quick tour of the rooms, guilty again, looking for the negative, for some signs that she was not packing up and leaving. She could not do that now, not with all the exclusive knowledge which bound them together. Knowledge of Charles Tysall, not only as that rich and privileged businessman-thief, whom Malcolm had pursued with all the futility of the law long before it was made apparent to Sarah what else he was. Bugger the past. It was the future Malcolm wanted.

  The dog froze at Malcolm’s flank, leaning against him. Red hairs from her long coat already decorated the trousers of his suit. Footsteps, upstairs in the flat above, harmless, unhurried. They both relaxed. The dog shook herself; he felt inclined to copy. Dog lived in the present; so should they all. Charles Tysall was dead. He might have mutilated his own wife and driven her to suicide, then turned his attentions to Sarah, but now he was dead. Dead as an old potato chip.

  That was all right then. Perhaps all himself and Sarah needed was a holiday. Brisk sea air, that sort of thing.

  I am only an ordinary man, Malcolm told himself. An ordinary man who tries to be decent and honourable. I should not have memories like this, complications like this. I only want to love and be loved.

  Back outside in the sunshine of summer, crossing the park to the road, he made himself think of sea air, but his thoughts only shifted back. That was the problem with reliving memory, even in the tidy way he did: it infected everything, like rancid oil in cooking. He could not think of sun, sea and sand without thinking back to Charles. How the man who was the closest thing to evil he had ever encountered went on being so, even in death. Only Charles Tysall, moving unit of harm, could choose to despoil some innocent seaside resort by committing suicide in it, just as his wife had done. Had the man never heard of preservation?

  Life, Malcolm thought to himself, is a bitch. If he could ever have thought of Sarah as a bitch, it would be easier.

  Watching the dog lolloping away, he began to laugh. The laughter was the result of suddenly seeing himself introducing Sarah to others. This is my wife Sarah. We met in the hall, beneath the mirror, through an extraordinary set of coincidences you would find impossible to believe and so do I.

  The word ‘wife’ stuck in his throat. He wanted to be a husband; take this wonderful creature and make an honest woman of her. Laughter ceased. Oh yes, he told himself, you can lead a dream to water, but you cannot make it drink.

  Sarah Fortune had been taught by her mother never to complain. She had also been warned that there was an element of indecency in her nature; that her energy was a nuisance and that a woman’s lot was not happy. Parental ambition had amounted to a kind of Calvinism, a constant push in the direction of career over frivolity which dictated that Sarah keep her nose to the grindstone and her red hair in ugly plaits until she was qualified to earn a living. With the double standard of a mother, Sarah’s had still wanted her daughters wed, the sooner the better; wanted them free but still suppressed, clever but stupid, independent but biddable. By damning with faint praise, she nurtured in Sarah a profound sense of worthlessness which secured obedience to all expectations. The girl passed examinations, became a lawyer, acquired another as a husband and everything seemed well, until the point when he died behind the wheel of his car, distracted by recent sex, not with Ms Fortune but her sister. He was a lazy opportunist who went for the nearest. In one fell swoop, red-haired Sarah lost trust, a spouse, a sibling and all her mother’s values, as well as the foetus she carried at the time.

  After a period of recovery in which she remained, as always, a reluctant but efficient professional, she set about shedding the work ethic as easily as she shed her clothes, an exercise she could complete with incredible speed and efficiency. Ms Fortune recognized no moral principles other than thou shalt be kind, few instincts which were not positive and no incontrovertible fact other than that men always leave in the end.

  She retained that bitter sense of worthlessness, saw all the accidents of her life as a reflection of it. Sarah could no more believe that someone truly loved her than she could have flown over the moon. She saw sex as an enjoyable necessity, love as a variety of claustrophobia, a fine deceit, a trap. She was warm as fire, generous to a fault, occasionally as cold as ice. She took nothing for granted.

  Miss Fortune, at thirty-three, was contemplating the dreaded moment of saying goodbye to Malcolm Cook for a number of reasons which made eminent sense in the middle of the night, rather less in the bright sunlight of a July morning. He had loved her from afar for two years, at closer quarters for one, saved her life and continued to offer the kind of single-minded devotion he himself received from his dog. He was fuller of natural goodness than a bowl of cornflakes and it drove Sarah beyond distraction. For one, she knew she wasn’t worthy of that; for two, she did not want to receive what she knew she could not give; for three, he would be better off without her; fourthly, she was already too far involved with his family; fifth, she felt like a prisoner and was not the stuff of a good wife.

  These were the reasons she counted on her fingers as she reversed her car into the wall and heard the back wing crunch against concrete. Each reason had an element of truth. Malcolm would demolish them like a row of ninepins, argue with the full force of his finer feelings and his enlightened compassion. Finally, he might threaten her with ownership of the dog. Sarah was feeling sufficiently liberated by the satisfying sound of mashed metal to recover her sense of humour. Perhaps that was all she wanted in the first place, not a lover who lived in the same building, whose father was her employer, but a dog.

  The car was easily the flashiest of Sarah’s possessions, a misguided bonus from the firm to keep her happy. The engine leapt into willing life at the merest touch, rather like Malcolm. From the outside it looked as if things had fallen into her lap. Which they had in the last year, with such cr
ushing weight she reminded herself of a shopping trolley and it made the same sense as giving the world tour to a small, red squirrel.

  Ernest Matthewson, close to retirement, inhabited a huge office decorated by his wife, which was why he could not get rid of all the humming birds climbing up the blinds and fluttering amongst the fabric of the chairs which were intended to make him feel thoroughly comfortable, a reminder of how he lived at home. Cushioned, catered for, resplendent, like a pasha on a throne, with a loving woman who bashed the heart and the ulcer by alternate feeding and starving of same. He considered the dreams of slender youth, currently advanced to closeted luxury, weight control, client accounts, computers, goodwill, diplomacy and language. Sarah Fortune had been his choice: he had interviewed her years since, when she was freshly widowed, but he couldn’t pretend she was partnership material, not in today’s grey world. She was also the girl his wife favoured as daughter-in-law.

  ‘I disagree,’ he said aloud, banging the desk, wincing. ‘All right, ALL RIGHT! I still disagree!’

  So: Sarah might well have turned his fat and isolated stepson into some semblance of a human being and brought him back into the fold, but one look at the child was enough to show the liaison would be a disaster. Women envied, youths simpered, clients salivated at the sight of Sarah, and although Ernest, out of respect to his age and his fragile health, did not follow suit, he considered his protégée as a jewel beyond price who belonged, for safety’s sake, locked inside a watch. He also loved her dearly in a manner which made him feel only slightly treacherous for hoping she would go away, even though a morning when her feet went by his office without pausing was a bleak day indeed. Having made his announcements to an empty room, Ernest listened.

  She usually fell at the bottom step opposite his door, where the bad carpet curled against the good leading away from where important clients trod in quality shoes. The worn patch caught the headlong rush of her steps whenever she was blinded by the armful of flowers for her room and the minuscule briefcase containing some pretence of overnight work. As she tripped, she swore loudly. The sound of absent-minded obscenities made Ernest curl with laughter. He did not like to think what they did for his errant son.

  ‘Oh shit a fucking brick. Not again.’ She spoke it in her low, musical voice, like a person reciting poetry. Ernest flung open his door, pretending to be angry, terrified in case she should be gone.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, woman? You do that every time and you always swear. I don’t know. What’s the matter with your vocabulary?’

  ‘What’s wrong with your carpet, more to the point? Does this too, every time. I’ve just put a dent in the company car, nobody else’s motor involved, you understand. Just some fucking concrete pillar.’ She was standing there, grinning like a recently fed cat with half-clean paws, every inch of her unsuitable for the office of a solicitor of the supreme court, more like a bouncer at the Hippodrome if only she wasn’t so tiny and so highly coloured. The colour came from the freckled skin and the brilliant red hair. No-one could say she dressed like a siren, in a perfect camel brown dress, but there was something about that great, wide belt of soft, tan leather which made her look as edible as the bacon sandwich she proffered in his direction, shrouded in greasy paper, the whole gift presented with a grin.

  ‘Yours,’ she said. ‘Oh, yes, and the racing pages. How’s things?’

  Ernest relaxed. His large stomach growled and sagged like a parachute landing. Sarah always made a man mindful of his girth, first to suck it in, then to let it out in glorious relaxation.

  ‘Terrible,’ he said. ‘Awful, really. Come in. I’ve got a case for you. Should take you out of London for the summer. Come in.’ The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them and he turned away abruptly, winded by the devilish inspiration which had been incubating for many days and only now came into words. It was like delivering a baby with a knife. He was saddened too, at this instinctive combination of wanting her out of the way while knowing he would miss her. There was something about the effect she had had on their late client, Charles Tysall, to say nothing of his stepson, her ability to make strong men putty, along with something else which smacked of love and a profound suspicion.

  ‘Only if you want,’ he added hurriedly, sitting to hide his confusion, lunging towards the bacon sandwich. Monday was always one of Mrs Matthewson’s sensible days, Fridays were better.

  ‘I’m only suggesting you leave for a while to save me from this,’ Ernest mumbled with his mouth full, feeling the decadent bacon grease creep down his chin. ‘You’re not good for my insides.’

  ‘The bread’s wholemeal,’ said Sarah, tranquilly, as if that made all the difference. ‘Full of fibre.’ She never had believed in diet, ate anything which was not moving. Looked at him with that complete acceptance she granted the human race. What she thought behind those great big eyes he never questioned for fear of being told. Looking at his fidgeting, she thought how it was just as well that she and Malcolm and Malcolm’s lovely mother had conspired to subvert Ernest’s post bag and save him from the worst demands, as well as the hateful revelations, of his clients. Also, how she and Malcolm had managed to excuse her absence last year by saying she had suffered an accident. She was a gifted liar. Making him ooh! and aghh! about the effects of a broken windscreen had been far better for his explosive ulcer and fragile heart than telling him the truth about a client. Charles Tysall had done enough damage, most of it still unmended. Some people needed the truth. Others needed saving from their own beliefs that all clients were good chaps. Ernest was one of the latter. He might not have been once, but now his health made him so.

  ‘Tell me about this case, then. I need amusement.’

  ‘Very important client,’ Ernest mumbled again.

  ‘It can’t be, or you wouldn’t be sending me.’

  Ernest sighed. ‘Important by my standards, not by those of the partnership. Clients I’ve had for a long time.’ He meant clients not eligible for the seduction of his junior partners, who rubbed grey-suited shoulders with bankers and accountants, captains of industry and Government officials, drinking mineral water at lunch-time, for God’s sake, not a human being among them. Ernest was well aware of being slightly redundant in the new generation, retained for the weight of his age and the number of nasty facts he knew about others, but Sarah had no chance. She was tolerated in the attics of the low-earning litigation department because someone had to do the odds and ends. The someone was preferably a woman without ambition. No partner would miss her for the summer. None of them guessed how valuable she was.

  ‘Well, if these clients are important to you, I’ll make them important to me. Why out of town? When do I go? And what nasty thing do you want me to do?’

  Ernest nearly fell out of his chair. For an idea with such a difficult, if spontaneous conception, this was all growing suspiciously fast. Not that she was usually unamenable to suggestion; the passivity hid the obstinacy of a mule, just like her smile hid depths of despair and a strange knowledge beyond her years, touching the parts other women did not reach. Too late, Ernest remembered Charles Tysall and where he had died.

  ‘A family estate’, he began, ‘needs sorting out. By the sea. You’re always saying you like the sea.’

  ‘I know nothing about probate. Or the sea.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? Look, we’re only talking about a family who need their heads knocking together. Just stick around, work out what they want, get a draft agreement on who should have what . . . the boffins and the Court of Protection can do the rest.’

  Sarah dusted crumbs off her skirt. Ernest so admired the way she ate, like a delicate wolf.

  ‘I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about. You’d better explain,’ she said. He took a deep breath, prepared to mix fact with fiction in order to make the prospect more appealing.

  ‘Large house in the country, right? No, not an ancestral mansion, but plenty of land, and . . . no, I’m n
ot going to tell you why the estate is as big as it is. You can let that titillate the imagination and find out for yourself. It needs an entirely fresh mind, so the less you know the better. Family consists of two sons, one daughter, eighteen to thirty-four, I think, all of them at war. Why? Dad died two years ago, left the whole caboodle to his wife for life, and then,’ he rummaged on the desk, flicked the pages of a grease-stained photocopy, ‘. . . I quote, “to all my children in whatever shares my wife should decide”. Perfectly poisonous will; he should have asked me to draft it, ungrateful sod. I did everything else. He must have been out of his mind.’

  ‘And was he?’

  ‘Probably, but not provably. The point is, his wife is. Off her rocker, barmy, barking, out of her tree.’ He liked to mix metaphors. ‘She’s never going to be in a position to make a valid will. If she dies intestate, disaster. Terrible tax implications. The children aren’t exactly carving each other up, I think they have straws between their teeth, or would it be sand? Needs an outside mind to construct an acceptable arrangement, working out who’ll get what and when. Then they can run their lives peacefully until the old lady pops her clogs and even then, the transition will be easy.’

  Sarah rose gracefully. ‘You need an estate planner, not me,’ she said.

  ‘I need a litigation expert who knows how to make people avoid litigation. I think you’ve got to be on the spot, hopeless otherwise. They’ll put you up, always a spare cottage, they rent them out, saves expenses.’ He was full of admiration for himself: everything dovetailed so neatly without him thinking at all. In fact, he rarely indulged deep thought.

  She was standing over his desk, reached forward and pinched his cheek.

  ‘Wake up, Ernest, will you? This is me, Sarah. You must detest these clients, or you wouldn’t consider foisting me on them simply because you would like me to be a hundred miles away from Malcolm.’