A Clear Conscience Page 21

  The bus would smell less sweet. She and Joe were going out on the town and she was going to act like a lady so she could be treated in the same way. In the heat of the afternoon, she walked slowly down the stairs, so as not to perspire, practising an elegant step as she turned left out of the central portico and made for the leisure centre in the near distance. There were always taxis cruising there.

  When Helen opened the door to her own flat, her toes felt the tickle of new carpet. The front door moved across it stiffly, dragging on the pristine surface of deep gold. The door to the living room had been removed and left with a notice attached. All the rooms seemed slightly smaller, the ceilings closer, while her feet sprang as though on a trampoline, from room to room, before she kicked off her shoes in case they were dirty. Gold and blue, reflecting colours onto the white ceiling, even the kitchen painted, the window-panes mended and shining clean, the chipped surfaces polished within an inch of life and everything suddenly respectable. It felt like being given a prize, a parcel containing a ton of self-esteem, and for all that, it did not feel quite like home. There was the odd piece of furniture which looked as if it had strayed from the film set of some historical kitchen-sink drama into one of modern romance and, for a minute or two, she felt the same way herself. Outdated. The whole vision gave her the desire to comb her hair and tidy herself up a bit, just so she would match. Even the cat was infected. It came indoors via the flap in the kitchen wall and sat marooned on the floor, washing itself assiduously, then leaping onto the table, crouching with the close observation of a judge. The tail moved, sleek and ominous, while the cat cleaned her paws.

  All right, Joe Boyce admitted to the colonel, I am, as a matter of fact, a bit nervous about the evening in hand. I mean, wouldn’t you be? My wife walks out on me, leaves me to get burgled, decides to make it up in her own time while all I can think of is how we’ve lost everything. Everything, mate, I’m telling you, everything we ever wanted, including a whole lot of stuff I never even knew I had, see? Shameful, isn’t it? Only she isn’t ashamed, not her. They never are, are they, wimmin?

  They were seated outside the Spoon. The flowers had the scent of decay about them; Joe had bombarded them with mineral water during the afternoon recess and the lobelia, in particular, seemed to resent it. Mickey had a man come and do the flowers, but the man’s visits made no allowance for this kind of heat and Joe reckoned flowers had a thirst too, just like the colonel and himself.

  You could talk all day to the colonel, Joe decided, provided he said nothing back, only made agreeable nods and grunts. He had done nothing much else since coming in here at three in the afternoon, cunning old bird to realise Joe was there, too, and just the company Joe needed. Somewhere along the line of the week’s traumas, Joe was inclined to fuss the colonel like a dog so old and loyal the owner becomes impervious to the smell. The colonel had not moved in an hour: Joe had been in and out, recounting episodes of his own life with increasing indignation. Dear boy, the colonel murmured in receipt of each drink and each anecdote. Dear boy, how absolutely frightful for you.

  His pose had become statuesque, if an egg-shaped body could ever be thus described, until, when Joe emerged with yet another for both of them, he found to his surprise that the colonel had leapt to his feet. Leaping was not his style; the effort made him pant, his voice was both slurred and distinct and all the same his heart was in it.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘charmed, I’m sure.’ There was an attempt to sweep a bow which almost turned into a curtsy. Cath helped him back to his seat. She was bold as brass, sitting outside there as if she owned the place, looking up at him, raising her sun-glasses; Cath, in sun-glasses over painted eyes, smiling with a red mouth, sitting with her legs crossed and her bag under the iron chair, fanning herself against the heat. She looked a different woman: Joe did not like to think that time spent away from him could have done that.

  ‘Hello, Joe. If you aren’t going to say hello, do you think I can have some water? I’m parched.’

  Echoes came back to him … Joe, could you make me tea, I hurt all over, Joe, please … He looked at her, goggle-eyed, unable to move as she made conversation with the colonel. Nice weather, isn’t it? Yes, a bit hot, ma’am, but better than being cold, hey? Oh yes, surely, I hate the cold, don’t you, but what do you wear when it’s like this? The plants still drooping in misery behind them, as if Joe had given them gin rather than water; Cath smiling like a stranger, straight into the eyes of another old man. All that was bad enough before Alistair Eliot walked by. Joe shot inside, thinking it was all too much to bear: it was as if his allies had all gathered together to shoot him; his wife looking positively sexy, his friend come by to reprove him, everyone looking at everyone except himself, redundant amongst them all. Still the hanger-on, not only at his own party but every other he had ever attended.

  Alistair Eliot smiled at the duo outside the Spoon. They looked like a nice old man and his daughter, he could see himself in that role when Jane was grown up. He did not recognise Mary Catherine Boyce in her smart outfit, although she stirred some dim memory in his more than usually distracted state; she had nothing to do with the Cath he had met so often in an overall. Different women, different territory, however close. If he had had a hat, he might have raised it. Joe watched him go with relief, Cath, with bitter hurt.

  ‘You can go fuck off if you like,’ Joe said to the young man behind the bar. ‘Cos I don’t think I’m going anywhere. My loving wife, see her, outside? She’s come in to help. About time she helped.’

  The young man shook his head, tempted but remembering the size of Mickey Gat.

  ‘Can’t do that, Mr Boyce. I got orders. You’ve got to go out.’

  Sitting outside with the colonel, Cath watched her own expectations fade. A posse of drinkers arrived out of their offices, chattering like starlings, ready to unload the day. The relief barman brought her water with lemon and ice, but Joe ignored her, until, after two hours in which her own immobility made her cold, despite the humid warmth, he came and sat down, sullen and silent. She placed a tentative hand on his arm, and then, jeeringly, he spoke.

  ‘You look very nice. Planning on going somewhere special, were you?’

  She felt for a minute as if her heart would break, smiled steadily, stroking his arm as if in supplication, and it was the suggestion of pleading in this action which finally mollified him, although he was already drunk. Drunk in the way Joe Boyce was at work, never quite showing it, simply possessed of a slight wildness.

  ‘Come on,’ he ordered. ‘Off we go.’ He marched down the street before her, letting her run behind. ‘We’ll find a nice pub,’ he shouted over his shoulder, watching with approval her attempts to keep up. There had been the suggestion of tears in her eyes as she sat with the colonel: the unfamiliar mascara was blurred. The hard-earned dignity of her entrance was diminishing fast. Already her blouse felt creased, the armpits sticky and still she held on to her PVC bag. They got as far as two streets away, into an establishment as far removed from the gentrification of the Spoon as was possible in the area. This one was full of tourists, young, impossibly handsome, brash and blond, girls in shorts grimacing at warm beer before they ordered more.

  They stayed there for an hour, Cath on bitter lemon, Joe putting a couple more stiff ones down his neck, ogling the girls. Cath paid for the rounds without protest. Then they moved on, to another place, slightly worse and even more crowded. He led; Cath followed. Joe told her about the burglary, without otherwise volunteering much. He did not ask a single question about her welfare, what she had done, how she had been. She asked him if he had been eating properly and he said no. Her face grew stiff from smiling as Joe chatted to strangers in a long, almost ritualistic humiliation. In the last of four pubs, long after midnight, where drinking was still in full swing for a birthday party, Cath went to the Ladies and left him, via the back door.

  The sky outside grew softly dark, then the rain stopped play for those bold enough to risk sitting ou
t of doors in a London summer. Around Sloane Square, the cruising cars found other destinations and the streets shone with damp. In Emily Eliot’s household, silence persisted. Jane was in her room drawing furiously on listing paper many hours after she was supposed to be asleep. Emily had long since gone to bed alone. Alistair was in his study, not exactly working, but staring at the wall, wondering about other trials rather than the one commencing tomorrow, worried about society, the universe, his household bills and any other subject but himself. He would have liked the oblivion of being drunk, to avoid having to conclude that there were times when he did not really like Mrs Eliot very much, even though he loved her.

  Somewhere in the middle of a great deal of diffused guilt about what he might be doing wrong, Alistair saw himself walking past the Spoon earlier that evening, resisting the temptation to stop for a drink, noticing the old man sitting alongside that familiar face which had nagged him all the way home. Cath: he had it now, only it made the guilt so much worse. Of course it had been Cath, with that hunched way of sitting and that secretive smile, and he had ignored her. Alistair recognised the need to speak to some wise soul outside his family circle, to straighten out his own emotions. He could only think of Helen West or Geoffrey Bailey as those with the necessary degree of detachment to hear him out when he did not know what he wanted to say. He walked to his son’s bedroom at the back of the house, noted that the window was wide open in the boy’s absence. A lingering smell of cigarette smoke pervaded the room, explaining this sudden passion for fresh air; why didn’t the boy just do it openly, instead of treating it as a clandestine pleasure? There were so many worse crimes, such as unkindness, brutality, dishonesty and wilful blindness.

  The onset of rain made him feel better; he leaned out of the window. Down below, light shone into the garden from Jane’s room, illuminating the churned earth outside her window. The perfume Alistair had accepted from Joe Boyce and failed, as yet, to show to his wife, burned a hole in the bottom drawer of his desk. He knew in his heart of hearts that his wife had acted on instinct, but he also knew that Cath, their victim, was not a real thief.

  Cath could not move. Instead, she let two, three buses go by and stayed in the shelter, waiting for him. Joe Boyce had reached the point Cath had recognised on many an evening at home, all passion, all aggression spent, leading him into a state when he was as soft and floppy as a cuddly toy. Staggering to the bus stop, he was outrageously pleased to see her, affectionate, scarcely able to stand, the last remnants of recent memory gone. They stood beneath the awning with their bodies forming a triangle, he leaning into her, pressing against her for balance, while she braced herself against the shelter and let him slobber into her ear. ‘Oh Cath, I’m sorry Cath, I do love you, Cath … why do you do this to me, Cath, why did you … I love you, Cath.’ A litany going on, interrupted once in a while with a curse about the non-appearance of the bus. The ignominy of her evening no longer troubled her: she had money for a taxi, but did not search for it, she simply stood there waiting for the number 59, late night bus, to take them home as if she had known it would happen this way, all the time.

  The bus stormed into sight, bottom half empty, top deck one third full. There were a few stares of disapproval as Cath pushed and shoved to get Joe upstairs and all the way to the front, out of harm’s way, with him giggling throughout as if she was tickling him. She sat with his heavy arm around her shoulder, almost pushing her off the narrow seat, still murmuring, I loves you, Cath, you know I do, she shushing him as she would a child while the imperious conductor looked at their passes and ambled away, tongue clicking under his breath, shaking his head at the futility of the human race. And then, with a sigh, Joe slid towards the window and let his face rest against the pane. She had always marvelled at his capacity not only for instant forgetfulness, but also for unplanned, profound sleep. It was something she envied, rarely achieved and craved all the time.

  Sleep softened the lines of his face, made his mouth seem generous rather than petulant. Cath stared ahead as the bus churned through the drizzle, past the deserted theatres of Shaftesbury Avenue where the lights gave promise of life still existing inside gambling parlours and slot machine arcades, the last resort of pimps, touts and those few still desperate for entertainment. In front of her eyes, night-time London took shape and showed shame: people bedding down in doorways, drunken revellers climbing on board for a few stops, restaurant waiters, the last to come out into the dark. By the time the bus reached Islington, it was almost empty again, ploughing a path east, rattling sleepy windows down narrow roads. Joe slid further down the seat, snoring. His hands remained crossed on his chest, his legs splayed, still allowing her no room for comfort. Cath turned. Behind her, near the top of the stairs, three other passengers also slept, one of them noisily. Joe’s shirt had ridden up, exposing his belly. His trousers had slipped down as he stumbled up the stairs. Like his brother-in-law, he had grown soft in the stomach.

  Cath leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. I gave you the chances, she whispered. I gave you the chance to look after me, and you could not take it. I can’t do anything else, my love. Then she felt inside the PVC bag and withdrew the bayonet. Rusted, certainly, but sharpened again long after being ground to sharpness by some backstreet lathe, honed against stone, so that the blade was half the size it had been, whittled and ground to a shine. Damien had taught her how to do that, a long time since, when they had both learned how to make every single thing useful, even a bayonet. Joe or Damien, she forgot which: only men thought they knew how to sharpen a blade, something they learned in the company of other men.

  She had her left arm firmly round his shoulder for balance as she plunged the blade into his belly. There was an inconsequential thought of how much more easily this could be done with a kitchen knife if such items were not, somehow, sacrosanct. As she plunged, with the same energy she applied to housework, she leaned closer, putting her hand over his mouth, the way she had done before when the conductor was looking, and dragged the blade towards herself, twisted, pulled it away, despite the resistance, then began again, left to right, systematically, the way she Hoovered stairs. The large sheet of thin polythene, pinched from Emily’s dry-cleaned clothes and now used as a kind of apron, rustled as she twisted the blade for the second time. Cath had a passion for cleanliness and did not want to get dirty: the skirt was important. Joe’s eyes opened wide; his mouth bubbled with spittle; he struggled in weak spasms. She held him tighter; she had muscles like an ox. From behind they looked like a couple adjusting themselves for amorous comfort. The little barks he made could have been those of a man fondled intimately.

  Before the blood cascaded, Cath covered him with the jacket which had been half off his shoulders when he wailed his way to the bus stop. She wiped her hands on it first. She looked around again before tugging out the bayonet, amazed at the effort it took, mumbling under her breath about the inefficiency of the thing and at the same time examining the dark floral skirt and the black blouse for damage. There was little sign. The bus sailed past St Paul’s Road and into Hackney. Cath waited for a moment, withdrawing from him fastidiously and carefully. She was a mile or so from home.

  Fate had given her the weapon. She was governed by fate. A child had given her the knife. It was preordained.

  When she alighted, five stops from the main terminal, surrounded and hidden by three teenagers in search of a club they had heard about up here which stayed open all hours, she looked like an ordinary little waitress coming home from a job rather than someone returning from a night out. She remembered not to open her mouth, set off for Bevan House. With the bayonet in the PVC bag, Cath walked smartly along the main streets, her little heels whacking the pavement in challenging sound. No-one stirred. No short cuts, no shrinking in the shadows. Walk proud: someone had told her that was the way for a woman to stay safe.

  Halfway up the rising heat of the flats, wiping away the last of the mascara, blurred by tears into black channels round her mout
h, she reminded herself how dangerous it was out there. Wept anew, because she had loved him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Helen West was day-dreaming, playing several scenes over in her mind. Scene One: the door would open. Bailey would cross the threshold, gasp with admiration and fall at her feet. Scene Two: the pair of them hosting a party, without argument. Scene Three: herself, in this room, preaching hypocritically to Emily Eliot and Redwood about the joys of single life. Scene Four was the door opening again, but this time to admit a total stranger, a dependable-looking male with a chunky physique diametrically opposed to Bailey’s own, carrying a bouquet of flowers as he murmured, What a lovely home you have, Helen; what exquisite taste; marry me tomorrow and never work again. Scene Five: even bigger bouquets. The next, possibly most realistic scenario, was the door opening yet again, Bailey waiting behind it, refusing to come in, while she ran across to welcome him and tripped on the new carpet. The last sequence was Bailey and herself sitting in the golden living room by the fire, like Darby and Joan. Then the film snapped.

  Unable to make much sense of her own quixotic day-dreams, Helen was severely ashamed of them. Halfway through Tuesday evening, she had completed the final touches, added two new plants and some flowers in the kitchen. She was so impressed with the splendour of the flat, she had been tempted to phone Bailey and warn him that if he did not faint at the sight there would be dire recriminations, but that would spoil the surprise.

  Day-dreams made her angry, they were yet another weakness. It was useless pretending she was not influenced by what she saw and read; she was not immune to the contagion of the romantic or the desire for security purveyed by mothers and magazines, even though experience had taught her to expect so little. Wedding bells were the music of the young. Helen did not want a solid Emily Eliot style ménage, but she did not quite know how not to not want it either, or how to close her ears to the blandishments of marriage propaganda. So here she was, a grown-up woman, more emancipated than most, mistress of all she surveyed in an elegant apartment with real food in the kitchen, waiting for her man with all the subtlety of a street-corner prostitute.