Old Acquaintance (Ray Guinness novels Book 2)

by Nicholas Guild

  . . . . .

  The built in clock on the electric range indicated only a few more minutes before six. Outside the sky was still dark, but the darkness had lost its hard edge and you could begin to discern the outlines of tree limbs and the sloping of the land down to the water. For all practical purposes the night was finished, and Guinness hadn’t managed even half an hour’s sleep. He let go the edge of the shade and stepped away from the kitchen window with a sigh; it wouldn’t even be worthwhile trying to sleep anymore. He might as well just forget about it.

  Kathleen was washing the few dishes they had used—the original Clean Plate Kid. Within twenty-four hours she would probably depart this house, never to return again; but that didn’t mean she had any idea of just leaving the crockery stacked up in the sink for Duelle to worry about. Not her. At bottom, probably, it was a question of form.

  He had finally persuaded her, in any case, of the necessity of leaving. It hadn’t been easy—she had had some idea that since Duelle was behind everything, she was therefore perfectly safe.

  “He wouldn’t hurt me,” she had said, with something of bitterness, as if she had somehow come to resent the fact that her husband wasn’t at all the dangerous type. It was a curious reversal of her attitude of eight years ago, but then very likely, Guinness decided, he was reading too much into a mere tone of voice.

  “No, Duelle wouldn’t. You’re right about that.” Guinness crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back against a counter to watch her, the sleeves of her bathrobe rolled up to above her elbows, as she rinsed off a handful of cutlery. It had been a long time since he had watched a woman doing the dishes.

  “But you have to remember,” he went on, “he has some pretty rough friends these days. One of them—you can’t imagine how rough. And they run him, not the other way around. If they decide that you or Rocky constitute any kind of a threat to them—or if, for some reason, it simply proves convenient—they’d do just exactly what they threatened they’d do, and they wouldn’t ask Duelle’s permission. Don’t kid yourself; there isn’t a thing he could do to protect you.”

  It was odd how he felt somehow as if he should apologize. As if by saying such things, he had made them so. As if it were his fault there were evil men in the world. And, in fact, there wasn’t any significant moral distinction he felt prepared to draw between the men who threatened Kathleen and her child and the man he was when he wasn’t being the solicitous father and ex-husband. He knew perfectly well that under other circumstances—in another country perhaps, or if it were something at hazard he cared enough about—he wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to turn on someone else’s family. There wasn’t any way he could hypnotize himself into thinking he was any better than that.

  Still, it hadn’t been him who had gotten Kathleen into this fix. He was only there to bail her out, if he could. If she would listen.

  But this time she did listen, and she didn’t seem to blame him for the mess that had been made of her life. She seemed, almost, to have forgotten that he too was that kind of man. She simply trusted his word and left the basis of that trust, the basis of his claim to special knowledge, conveniently unexamined. After all, she was alone and frightened, and it had been a long time since she had had anyone to trust, and it clearly wasn’t the moment for being overly particular about from whom she accepted help.

  Or perhaps he wronged her. It was one of the dangers of his kind of life, being overly cynical about people’s motives; Guinness didn’t need anyone to tell him that. And he didn’t need to be reminded who this woman was whom he watched drying knives and spoons as the rest of the world slept on around them. After all, she had been his wife once, and he had loved her so much that sometimes he had thought his heart would burst—he would love her that way this moment if he gave himself half a chance. No, there was nothing he didn’t already know about this particular one woman, and she had never been one to play games, to bill and coo and cast herself on the protection of the first ex­husband who happened to wander by. She wouldn’t be the one to set him up like that. She might ask for help, but she wouldn’t seem to be asking for more.

  And yet she was asking for more. They understood each other; she knew he would help her for his own reasons, not expecting anything back for it. And still she let him hold her, and she rested her head against his chest and clung to him as if he were the only safe refuge in the world.

  “I just wish—” Whatever it was, it was left unsaid. And they stood together and held on to the past. The past, at least, they had.

  They stood that way a long moment, until interrupted by the future, who stood in the kitchen doorway in her nightdress, watching them with large, grave, disapproving eyes.

  17

  They sprang apart like a pair of spooning teenagers suddenly caught in the glare of the front porch light. Rocky gave the impression of being almost as embarrassed as they were, only she had propriety on her side and seemed, after the manner of a child, inclined to push the advantage.

  “I heard people talking,” she said gravely, clutching together the lapels of her bathrobe. The long, faintly reddish blond hair was plaited in a loose braid that slid over her left shoulder, and she stood quite still, detached and critical. Even in that one isolated moment Guinness could see she was like her mother.

  Kathleen flashed him a secret, expressive smile—wasn’t this one of the standard crises of parenthood, the tender moment interrupted by the small, thin voice in the night?—and then promptly moved into action, assuming the half comforting, half reproachful tone of motherly discourse.

  “It’s nothing, dear, only Inspector McAffee—you remember I told you about him?” They swept out of the room together, Kathleen’s arm protectively over her daughter’s shoulder, just as it had been when he had first seen them together outside the school. Her voice trailed off as they disappeared down the corridor. Guinness turned back to the window over the kitchen sink, raising the blind.

  The sky by then was a soft gray, only a few more minutes until daylight. There was dew on the outside window ledge, beading up like oil. Guinness wondered how often it was necessary to paint the outside of a house in this climate. It was going to be another hot, muggy day.

  Suddenly he was filled by an intense repugnance, a feeling that he would be better anywhere than where he was, in this wretched little two bit town, in this house where he was so much an intruder. Kathleen might be amused at having to explain his presence with her to their own child, but he wasn’t. It was deadly to see that little slip of a thing standing there, to be resented and unrecognized, a stranger to one’s own flesh. It was of course precisely what one would expect, except that one might not expect to feel it so deeply. That was the surprise.

  Maybe it would be better if he just left. He might as well; there wasn’t anything he was accomplishing here. He could go back to his motel room and maybe get an hour’s sleep before breakfast. Just one hour—things always looked desolate when you had been too long without sleep. A little rest and he’d feel a lot better. He’d forget all about Kathleen and Rocky and what a waste of time his life was.

  There was even some traffic across the bridge on the far side of the lake, visible now in the lightening distance. Just a truck or two, a few sets of headlights going God only knew where with God only knew what, a demonstration of the obscurity of human purpose.

  Guinness turned away from the window, conscious that he wasn’t going anywhere. How could he? It would be impossible to leave now, impossible after four words.

  “I heard people talking.”

  If he left now he would never hear her voice again, would have nothing but the memory of her scowling at a trespasser. No, after eight years he would have to have something more than that. No one could ask him to settle for that. She was his child, after all, and he had some right to know something of what she was like.

  Kathleen came back and stood next to him, smiling faintly and staring down at the kitchen floor. Perhaps she wanted him to take her
in his arms again, and perhaps not. In either case, he didn’t.

  “She’s all right,” she said quietly, her hands pushed down into the pockets of her bathrobe. “She’s getting dressed now. Everything is explained, and we’re all going to have breakfast together. I told her you weren’t the boogieman.”

  Kathleen really was amused. Clearly she thought it was a scream that little Rocky had looked right through her father as if he weren’t there. He turned a little away from her and, without realizing it, clenched one of his hands into a fist.

  Women were wonderful creatures. She must have sensed something of his unhappiness, because it was only an instant before she had closed the half step between them and taken the closed hand in both of her own, gently pushing it open and pressing her fingers in between his.

  “Come on, Ray. It’s just that she’s such a little prig. They are at that age, you know.”

  No, he didn’t know. He knew how to break a man’s larynx so that he died without having made a sound; he knew just about everything there was to know about how to kill and probably, when it came to it, he would know how to die. He possessed the knowledge of his craft, but there wasn’t anything he knew about nine year old girls. That was a closed world.

  “You didn’t tell her—”

  She shook her head. “No, she doesn’t know anything about us. She doesn’t even know that Holman’s gone.”

  “Will she mind when she does know?”

  “About Holman?” Kathleen released his hand, lacing her fingers together in front of her but staying close to him. Close enough that her shoulder just touched the side of his arm. “Oh, yes, terribly. She doesn’t like him very much, but he’s her father and she’ll resent the disruption. She’s going through a phase right now where she’s very big on mine and thine, and one’s father falls rather emphatically into the mine category. He doesn’t have to be Robert Redford to qualify.”

  “I’m her father.”

  He wasn’t stating a claim, only a fact. Or rather, a grievance. He felt it was wrong that his daughter would never miss him, never even realize that he existed to be missed.

  Kathleen understood and said nothing; there wasn’t really much she could have said.

  “What have you told her about me?” He cleared his throat awkwardly and glanced up at the ceiling. “Does she ever ask?”

  “Yes, she asks. I told her you died when she was a baby, but that you had loved her. About eight months ago she asked me if I had loved you more than I loved daddy. I told her to wait until she was old enough to understand the answer, and she did understand that. She’s astonishingly quick about some things; I think she knew the answer even before she asked.”

  Guinness was not such a fool that he didn’t see that Kathleen had had a rough time of it, and that she had been wise. He appreciated that he had been left a shadowy figure, and didn’t even resent that Kathleen had seen fit to kill him in that way. He was better off dead; he would have more honor than as some fugitive from the mine category. And his daughter would be better off for knowing nothing more than the one transparent fact of his love. Anything more would have been a mistake; as it was, she could never deify him and make herself wretched because no man had a hope of competing with her ideal father. And the truth—what could the truth have done but make mischief?

  “Leave things the way they are,” he whispered, being unsure of his voice. “I wouldn’t want you ever to tell her that her father—”

  “I know. I won’t.”

  They were silent together for a long time, not quite able, either of them, to look the other in the face, and yet not wanting to be apart. It was as if, as strangers, they were meeting to mourn some common sorrow, shy of intruding but still afraid to be alone. The backs of their hands touched, as if by accident, and their fingers came together in a tentative embrace. Time would not vanish. It could only be lived through, and suffered to do its work.

  . . . . .

  Breakfast was not so difficult an affair as Guinness had thought perhaps it might be. It was served promptly at seven, in the full glare of the morning sunlight, with French toast and linen napkins—he wondered whom all this was intended to appease, himself or Rocky; his money was on Rocky—and tea was served in delicate china cups with swirling fluted sides. Rocky, like her mother, was a tea drinker—already, at the age of nine.

  “What did you do to your face?” she asked warily. Guinness smiled, wondering how much he looked like one of the rubber masks in the joke shop.

  “I ran into a door.”

  She didn’t believe him. She scowled at her mother, who seemed intensely busy cutting the French toast in front of her into smaller and smaller pieces.

  “He’s been fighting.”

  It was an accusation that seemed somehow to include them both, as if they had both been guilty of the implied deception. Kathleen was right; Rocky was clever. Apparently she had perceived that her mother and this unfamiliar and oddly sinister male stood in some relationship the precise nature of which eluded her. Kathleen was right and understood her daughter, but apparently not well enough to know when just to let it ride.

  “You heard the gentleman,” she snapped. “He told you he ran into a door, and if that’s what he told you then you shouldn’t contradict him.”

  Of course, she saw her mistake at once and retreated into haughty silence, but Rocky wasn’t fooled. Guinness was suddenly very grateful that it had not fallen to him to raise this particular child—she would have been too much for him, too much by half.

  “Do you like school?” Pouring himself another cup of tea, he suavely avoided looking at her. “Or is that a question strange men ask you all the time?”

  He stirred in a level teaspoon of sugar as he waited for an answer. He was absolutely prepared to wait; it had been a profession to make him perfectly immune to insolent silences.

  “I guess so.”

  “I bet I know what your favorite subject is.”

  She glanced up at him, her large eyes filled with the vague suspicion that somehow he was setting a trap for her. A sharp look at her mother tried to ferret out evidence of collusion, but Kathleen only shrugged—nobody was pinning any raps on her.

  “I bet your favorite subject is reading.”

  There was a tiny pause, just long enough to confirm that he had been right, and then Rocky moved her small shoulders, as if in imitation of her mother.

  “Yeah, I like reading well enough.”

  The parents exchanged a quiet, unnoticed smile. She was, after all, their child.

  Slowly, by painful degrees, Guinness drew out a list of his daughter’s most recent favorites. Most of them were the usual rubbish that girls read before they reach puberty and break through to Barbara Cartland and Jaqueline Susann—Nancy Drew, Black Beauty, that sort of stuff—but not all. At nine years of age, she had discovered Robinson Crusoe and Animal Farm and something called A Canticle for Leibowitz, which she seemed to like best of the three. Not bad.

  As she got caught up in telling him about Leibowitz’s canticle, which he gathered soon enough was roughly classifiable as science fiction—God, he loathed science fiction, always had; but, after all, she was only nine—she began to defrost a little, even to become fairly animated. By the time the discussion had made it around to George Orwell they might almost have been friends, provided they kept their conversations restricted to the one topic.

  Poor little thing. Guinness remembered his own lonely childhood, lived through within an area bounded by the dreariest elementary school in Newark, Ohio, if there was more than one, the apartment he shared with his draconian mother, and the public library—the only place on earth, it seemed, where he could count on being left alone—and he felt sorry for his daughter.

  Had it been anything like that for Rocky? Kathleen was a good woman, and no doubt she had done the best that she knew how; but she despised her husband, and Guinness could imagine that their domestic life had been filled with tension.

  “Did you love my
father more than daddy,” she had asked Kathleen. Guinness tried to imagine how the Holman Duelles could have impressed a child to have prompted her to ask such a question.

  Poor little thing.

  “I don’t think Snowball did all those terrible things,” his daughter stated, with tenuous conviction. “And Napoleon stole the plans for the windmill.” Her small face wrinkled with concern. “I didn’t like the way it ended; it made me sad.”

  “It made me sad too—I think he wanted to make us sad.”

  She nodded slowly; there seemed no limit to what she was capable of grasping. “Still, I don’t like it when the ending is sad.”

  It was the unanswerable argument. Guinness only smiled, thinking that this carrier of the human disease, this serious little girl who formed the third point of a triangle with himself and the only woman he had ever passionately loved, was fated to have a hard time in the world.

  When breakfast was over, Guinness went out into the living room to be out of the way while the two ladies cleared things away. No need to crowd them, to intrude too deeply into the privacy of the domestic order. He was at least peripherally accepted now—at least, his daughter no longer treated him to reproachful glances—but a man who stands around in the kitchen and watches the dishes being done would seem to be asserting some sort of claim; probably that wouldn’t sit well. So he contented himself with fingering the knickknacks on the coffee table and checking the progress of his bruise in the huge mirror that hung over the fireplace in lieu of a family portrait.

  There was a small grand piano near the back window, with simplified versions of Scott Joplin and the scores of movie themes in the music stand—doubtless Rocky’s, since Kathleen’s interest in music had been confined to the Renaissance lute. The sounding board was closed and the lid covered with what looked like a shawl, white with a fishnet weave and heavy fringe all the way around the edges, on which rested a number of massively framed photographs.