Surviving

by Allan Massie

  “It’s nothing,” she said, “really nothing, nothing to worry about anyway.”

  Kate left for her conference in Geneva.

  “We have to keep going,” she said to Belinda.

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  But something in their old easy intimacy was broken. She found herself blaming Kate for Erik’s departure. His share of their action had in some way liberated him. She ought, of course, to be glad of that – for his sake; would be if she loved him truly as a person, instead of what? “A toy” was the nasty word that came reproachfully to mind. Gary, she thought, gave him something, though I don’t know what.

  She spent more time with Stephen because they had had at least Erik in common, not that they talked of him except when once Stephen said, “I never want to be like that with anyone again. He was my last infatuation. I hope so anyway.” She had no answer for that.

  One day Stephen said, “I’ve made such a mess of my life, you know.”

  They were in his apartment which was now neat, clean, and tidy, stripped of all evidence of the horrors he had endured there. She picked up the book he had been reading and had laid aside when she arrived. It was Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.

  “Yes,” he said, taking it from her. “You know what Johnson said of this: it was the book that gave him ‘the first occasion of thinking in earnest of religion’. Considering I’m a priest I’ve come to it rather late. Nevertheless … I’ve been off my head, you know, all my life I sometimes think. You’re the only person here I can talk to about this, Belinda.”

  “I don’t know. I should have thought I was one of the last people. It’s something I just don’t understand. It says nothing to me.”

  “I’ve found myself able to pray again,” he said. “Things have come together since my last bout. Something’s been released in me. It’s connected with Tom Durward.”

  “I’m sorry, Stephen, you’ve lost me.”

  “What do you think has happened to Reynard Yallett?” he said, and then, without giving her time to reply, continued, “I was out of course when he was here in Rome and then disappeared, but I’ve read the stuff in the newspapers. Do you know, when I was coming out of that bout and having nightmares, as one does – you know – I was sure I had killed him. I saw myself sticking a knife in his gut, and the blood spouting over me. Can you imagine? Of course, I had killed him often enough in my mind.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, again. “What makes you think he is dead, and how did you know him? I didn’t know that you did or that he meant anything to you.”

  “Oh yes,” he said, “he meant too much to me, but now – don’t ask me why because I don’t know – I am free of him.”

  “But you don’t really think you’ve killed him? I mean, you know you didn’t, don’t you? You’ve no reason even to think he’s dead.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, that’s the great thing. I’ve been released, it’s an answer to prayer. But I am a murderer by intention, only I never had the courage, if that’s what was lacking, to be one in practice.”

  “You’d better tell,” she said.

  So he did, stumbling at first, embarrassed, confessing more fully than he ever had at meetings, telling her of the fear that Yallett had inspired in him, of his love for Jamie. “You mean, Tom Durward’s nephew?” Belinda said, pieces beginning to fit …

  “Yes, I often think all the boys I’ve ever loved have been no more than substitutes, quite inadequate substitutes, for what I lost when he killed himself. And yet I never laid a hand on him, it was Yallett did that, and more …”

  Belinda’s thought was: that probably meant nothing to Reynard; these things didn’t, I’m sure. Once he’d had his way, that was that.

  She said, “Do you think though he felt guilty when the boy killed himself, drowning, wasn’t it?”

  Stephen lifted his head. Telling his story had brought tears to his eyes.

  Now he said, “Do you know I’ve never thought of that, never considered how he may have felt. I hated him too much. And I hated myself because I had done nothing … nothing, either way.”

  That was all. The conversation had to stop there. They were in danger of entering intolerable territory.

  Stephen said, “I owe you a lot, Bel, but this life’s too much for me. I’m getting out, leaving Rome, going back to England. I can’t manage on my own, I know that now, and AA’s not enough, when there’s sex, my sort of sex, as well as drink to contend with, or better, escape from. So I’ve applied to join the Community of the Paraclete …”

  “I’ve never heard of it, I’m afraid. Paraclete? That’s the Holy Ghost, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s an order of monks, an Anglican one, very small, they have only one House, in the Yorkshire dales, but they’ve accepted me as a novice. Do you think I’ve made the right decision?”

  “Stephen, how can I possibly tell? I know nothing of these matters. But perhaps yes … I don’t know.”

  “You do know I’m no good at being on my own though?”

  “Yes, I know that,” she said.

  XLIX

  In Geneva Kate resisted the urge to take a train to Lyon to look up Gary in the Polish restaurant Tom had given her the address of. The temptation had been strong. She was still curious. She also felt a responsibility towards him and, as before leaving Rome she had admitted to Belinda, something strangely like affection. “And of course I failed him,” she said, which she could see irritated Belinda, who made no reply. Now, walking by the lake wrapped up and wearing a fur hat against the sharp wind from the mountains, she told herself it would be self-indulgence and, if he was settled there, disturbing for him. Perhaps, she thought, I’ll go instead to talk with his mother in London; I think she liked me, not that that matters.

  London was chill, wet, miserable. You were conscious of the crowd there as never in Rome, conscious on account, she thought, of pent-up frustrations all around you, even aggression. Still she had to talk with her agent who took her for lunch in her club in Soho. The agent, a young woman called Hilary who wore steel-rimmed spectacles and was celebrated, locally, for her ability to put publishers in their place and her authors, often, in places where they had no wish to be, urged Kate to strike out on a new line.

  “You were,” she said, “the last person to see Reynard Yallett before his disappearance. I want you to write a book about it.”

  “But I know nothing,” Kate said.

  “No matter. He’d been living a double life for years. That’s right up your street.”

  She expanded on the subject at length, over several Daiquiris which she drank throughout the meal of crab dressed with a pineapple coulis. Mineral water, she said parenthetically, forgetting what Kate was drinking, was so last year. Reynard, she said, was the coming fashion, he had overleapt the “new man”. He was a real shit, you must do him, she said.

  “You make him sound like a Simon Raven character,” Kate said. “Simon who?”

  She was a very up-to-the-minute agent, Kate thought, so “with it” – if “with it” wasn’t obsolete – that only the now concerned her.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said, meaning she wouldn’t, and regretting her former agent who had transferred her to Hilary on his withdrawal to the Dordogne.

  Hilary stubbed out her Marlboro Light in the coulis. “Clarissa will bring you up to speed. The girl’s so now she’s the new black and always late. But she adored Reynard. She adores you too. So she says.”

  She arrived with the coffee, all legs and liberty, lavish with kisses and short on apologies. She was delighted, she said – “entranced” was her actual word – that Kate was going to write about Reynard.

  “Philip’s certain he’s dead. He just knows that Gary Kelly killed him. That’s what he says. Of course he’s obsessed with Gary, he was the great success of his career, the utter zenith.”

  “Yes,” Kate said, “I remarked the obsession.”

  “It’s crazy,” Clarissa sa
id. “Reynard’s not dead, I would know if he was, I would feel it here.” She fluttered her fingers over her small breasts. “Besides he’s been seen in Buenos Aires, he’s always had a thing about Latin America. I mean, you can’t see Reynard letting those little shits at the Inland Revenue and the Bar Council get on top of him, can you? No, Philip’s right off the wall, he’s a monomaniac, which is only part of the reason we’ve split up. I’m with Mike now, did you know that? But you did know he had left Meg, didn’t you? He says it’s because she understood him; he’s so funny, Mike. Oh he sends you love, he’s in great form. We’ve taken him on staff, you know. It’s what he’s been needing, he says, and he really is brill.”

  “Is he drinking?” Kate said.

  “He wouldn’t be Mike if he wasn’t, would he?”

  “No, I suppose not,” Kate said. “And what of Philip, how’s he taken it?”

  “Do you know he’s hardly noticed. Like I said, he’s obsessed only with Gary Kelly. He says he has evidence that he’s engaged in the smuggling of illegal immigrants. Do you think that’s likely?”

  “No,” Kate said, “not at all,” having actually no idea.

  L

  It was Sol’s custom to give a party on Christmas Eve for all the members of the AA group still in Rome, and for their families and any visiting guests.

  “Do you mind?” Belinda said to her sort of brother-in-law, Kenneth, and his wife Maura, who had arrived the day before. “You can get out of it easily. You’re not houseguests as Sol puts it,” for at Maura’s insistence they were staying in a hotel, the Inghilterra, rather than with Belinda.

  Kenneth looked at Maura.

  “Why should we want to get out of it?” she said. “I take it there is booze for us unregenerates.”

  “Good. I’ll call for you at seven. Sol and Amelia’s apartment is just round the corner from you, in Largo Goldoni.”

  She got there on time. Kenneth was waiting in the foyer.

  “Maura’s running late,” he said. “She spent the afternoon shopping. I rather think she hoped you might be late yourself.”

  “Well, yes, I usually am, aren’t I?”

  “And now you’re not. Is there something you want to talk about?”

  “Not precisely, but it’s good to see you.”

  “Likewise. Will Kate be at this do?”

  “No,” Belinda said, “she’s away. In fact she’s in Aberdeen for Christmas, with her parents. Her father’s been far from well.”

  “Pity. I like Kate. I’m told she’s writing a book about Reynard Yallett now.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “That’s the word anyway. You were nearly engaged to him once, weren’t you, Bel?”

  “A long time ago and in another country. For my sins.”

  “Maura was his pupil in chambers, you know, for a bit. Before we knew each other. No happy memories there either.”

  “Why should you suppose Kate is writing about him?”

  “Well, that’s the word, as I say.”

  “Far as I know it’s nonsense. I mean, why should she? Why indeed should anyone want a book about him?”

  “You do live out of things, don’t you? His vanishing act has been the talk of the town.”

  “Small town then,” Belinda said.

  “Granted. But it’s a mystery, everybody loves a mystery.”

  “Not me. Reynard can be in Thailand or Cuba or at the bottom of the sea for all I care …”

  “Some think he’s dead. Philip Trensshe is putting it about that he’s been murdered, by the boy Kelly.”

  “Sounds crazy,” Belinda said. “What possible motive could Gary have had? Reynard defended him successfully, didn’t he?”

  “Yes indeed, but now Kelly seems to have disappeared too … Others think they’ve gone off together, as a couple. That seem likely? You met Kelly, I assume, when he was here with Kate. Well, I know you did because you were interested enough to get me to send you the reports of his trial. What did you make of him?”

  “Just a boy,” Belinda said, “a rather sad boy. He might be likeable if he allowed anyone close enough to like him.”

  “Ah, here comes Maura …”

  Sol and Amelia’s hospitality was lavish. There was a huge, a towering, macaroni pie, with chicken livers, hard-boiled eggs, strips of ham, chicken and truffles, embedded in masses of glistening macaroni, the dish kept piping hot by being placed on an electric thermostatically-controlled ring. There were two turkeys and a pumpkin pie, a York ham and a swordfish surrounded by prawns, a Caesar salad and a potato salad and tomato salad. Since non-drinking alcoholics mostly recover the sweet tooth of childhood, Amelia provided them with a king-size Monte Bianco cake, dripping with cream, English trifles, apple and cherry pies and a torta di ricotta, behind which was arranged on an ashet a mountain of fruit so beautifully and painterly balanced that it seemed a sin to disturb it. There was mineral water, and Coca-Cola, and elderflower cordial and lime juice, and for the unregenerate, as Maura had called them, bottles of Marino wine from the Castelli and two-litre flasks of Chianti.

  “It’s marvellous,” Belinda said, “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “We’ll be broke for weeks, we always are after Christmas,” Amelia said, “but it’s worth it.”

  “We miss Kate,” Sol said, “any word of her father?”

  “Much the same, I believe.”

  “And Stephen? Do you think he’s made the right decision?”

  “Who can tell? What was here wasn’t working for him.”

  What isn’t here isn’t working for me, she thought, smiling however to see Fergus take Maura by the arm, an Irishman to Irish girl, and hear him quiz her about Galway.

  “I’m a Limerick man meself,” he said in his hoarse breathy voice, “and what wouldn’t I give to be back there with a pint of porter before me? But you can’t turn back the clock, can you? And now I’m on the road to understanding myself and why I drink, I’m happy to be sober. And I couldn’t be sober back home, things would be too strong for me there. I’m a soft man, m’dear …”

  Kenneth was kneeling beside Bridget who sat in a corner, not liking being there, but having come, as she’d told Belinda every Christmas Eve for the last four years, because it would have been cowardly to keep away and, besides, Tomaso thought it was good for her. Indeed he insisted. Kenneth was kneeling because there was no other way in which he might hear Bridget’s whispering, and she was looking over his shoulder at Tomaso who was engaged in conversation with the middle one of Sol’s beautiful daughters, Mandy. He was setting himself to charm her but, Belinda knew, Bridget would let it go only so far. Tomaso bullied her, certainly – for her own good of course – but it was still Bridget who wrote the cheques.

  To her surprise she saw Tom Durward limp towards her. She hadn’t noticed him arrive. “I didn’t know you were back in Rome.”

  “Only arrived this afternoon. Hadn’t meant to come.”

  “There’s nothing wrong?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “How was Capri?”

  “Cold and wet when I left.”

  “I almost came to see you. It’s years since I’ve been there.”

  “You should have. I’d have liked that.”

  “Oh I’m always almost doing things …”

  She looked around. The party was gaining in animation. She gestured to Tom and they withdrew into an alcove.

  “Your disposal,” she said, “seems to have been remarkably effective.”

  “Just luck.”

  “Kate had another visit from Commissario Angeloni before she left. They’re convinced Reynard left Italy on a false passport. They’d been concerned that his name didn’t appear on any of the flight manifests, though he could have gone by train of course, but Scotland Yard or Special Branch, I don’t know which, believe he had acquired a false passport and was making plans to vanish. There had been big money transfers, and he had numbered accounts in various offshore whatever they are. I
sn’t it extraordinary?”

  “Just luck,” Tom said again. “Gary’s walked out on my Polish friend. Without leaving an address, naturally. He may be back in England. Who knows?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Can’t see that it does.”

  Tom lit a cigar.

  “Despite everything, not such a bad kid. Or is that sentimental?”

  “Probably,” Belinda said. And what about the other kid, have you heard from him, she wanted to ask, but didn’t.

  Instead she said, “Stephen’s gone into a monastery, did you know that? Stephen Mallany, I mean.”

  “No,” he said. “Can’t say I’m surprised though. Maybe Gary has too. Good Catholic boy, you know.”

  “Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “No, doesn’t.”

  “And Mike and Meg have split,” she said.

  “Yes, Meg called me. She’s gone to New York …”

  Sol knocked a spoon against a glass to obtain silence. “I’m not going to make a speech,” he said. “Amelia’s forbidden it. She says I can keep my speeches for meetings. So I’m just going to say how good it is to be approaching Christmas sober and to have all but got through another year. It’s a joy to see you all here, and so I wish you a merry Christmas and propose we drink a toast to that and to absent friends. Merry Christmas and absent friends …”

  Later they went, most of them, to the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli for Midnight Mass. It was full of women in fur coats and beautifully dressed men. Kisses and greetings were exchanged, with loud exclamations, while the priest muttered his way through the sacrament.

  When they emerged from the church it was very cold and a piper, dressed as a shepherd from the Abruzzi, played “Silent Night”. He probably wasn’t a shepherd and hadn’t descended from the mountains, but it was a very beautiful moment and good to think he might be.

  Belinda’s mobile rang.