A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “That’s a rubbish answer. You hate that I do precisely what she’s told me to do because it’s generally something that you don’t want her to do at all. So let me ask you this. D’you think I want to be her gatekeeper? Do you think I enjoy following her round and cleaning up her messes?”

  Rory observed the other woman, noting the unmistakable fire in her eyes. She said, “‘Messes’? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the fact that, despite the however-many-it-is years of your alleged ‘friendship,’ you haven’t yet twigged that Clare Abbott isn’t at all who you think she is. How well do you actually know her at the end of the day?”

  Rory could see this for what it was, an invitation to a very strange confrontation that she didn’t wish to have. She said mildly, “How well do we ever know another person?”

  “Well enough in this case for me to be able to tell you that Clare isn’t who you wish her to be and you can believe that as I live and breathe.”

  Rory stood. She’d finished her cup of tea, and although there was another biscuit left, she thought the course of wisdom might be to leave the other woman to do whatever stewing she felt she needed to do on the matter of who knew whom and what sort of difference that made anyway. She said, “I’ll walk to the town centre now. Come along, Arlo. Is there anything at all you’d like me to fetch you, Caroline?”

  “You’re the wedge” was Caroline’s reply.

  “What?”

  “You’re not trying to drive a wedge between me and Clare. You’re being the wedge.”

  “This is only a tee-shirt,” Rory said patiently. “You’re creating out of it—”

  “I’m not a fool, Rory. Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been reminding Clare every chance you have that you and she have history together while I am merely her employee. You see her as brilliant and clever, don’t you? But you have no idea what really goes on or the efforts I go to in order to keep her on the straight and narrow instead of exposing herself to situations that could ruin her in an instant, which—let me be brutally honest here—she is probably doing at this precise moment.”

  Rory blinked. She said quietly, “I’m taking Arlo for a walk now. I’m going to fetch some groceries while I’m out. You’re seeing to the day’s post, I believe. What we’re not doing is discussing Clare any further. Arlo, come.” She headed past her, out of the sitting room, to the front door, taking up Arlo’s lead from the stool where she’d left it when she’d entered the house. She clipped it to his collar.

  Behind her, Caroline said, “As long as you know she’s never going to give you what you really want from her. And as long as she knows that’s why you keep hanging about.”

  Rory stopped, hand on the doorknob, door partially open, Arlo already outside. She said to Caroline, “I hang about, as you say, because Clare Abbott and I have a friendship that goes back decades. Now, I suggest you do your job as you’re paid to do while I go to the supermarket.”

  SHAFTESBURY

  DORSET

  Clare waved off Rory’s concerns about Caroline Goldacre that night. They’d had a surprisingly decent meal of takeaway Chinese brought in by Rory from a doubtful-looking shop in Bell Street, and they had decamped to the back garden to enjoy a rare windless evening afterwards. They were finishing up a bottle of white wine while Arlo dozed at Rory’s feet.

  Clare said, “She’s just a mother hen. That’s all it is.”

  “You’ve no idea how she went on about your not being here when I arrived,” Rory countered. “As if it meant something dire that you had forgotten what time I planned to get here.”

  “But I didn’t forget.”

  “I know that. And as I have my own key, what does it matter? Yet she kept banging on about it. Then she began making strange comments about who you ‘really’ are beneath who you appear to be. Who you appear to be to me, at least. To her, you are apparently the genuine article, all your evils hidden when I’m around.”

  Clare turned from Rory and appeared to examine the view. The evening was drawing on, and across Blackmore Vale where the occasional farmhouse and hamlet stood, lights were beginning to wink in the distance as above them the first stars did the same. She said dismissively, “I put that sort of thing—the occasional bizarre outburst she has—down to what she’s been through in the past few years. And now things are—as she tells me—rather difficult with her husband.”

  “What could any of that have to do with what she said to me about you?”

  “Nothing at all. But you and I know that people cope with their lives in all sorts of ways. Part of her coping is that she seems to think I’ll go off course if she’s not constantly ministering to me. And I’ve not been able to persuade her otherwise. Perhaps I should go on holiday . . .” Clare let the sentence drift, as if she was considering potential destinations.

  “Are you going on holiday?”

  “You know I hate holidays. I can barely cope a weekend away from work. But I suppose I could pretend to go on one.”

  “That’s completely mad. To have to pretend to go on holiday just to get time away from someone that you employ? Clare, what on earth is—”

  “I wouldn’t be attempting to get away from her.” Clare got to her feet abruptly. Wineglass in hand, she went to the edge of the property where crevices in a waist-high stone retaining wall sprouted ferns, tall oxeye daisies, and white campion with its bladdered sepals and rich green leaves. Her fingers felt for one of the daisies, which she twirled restlessly. “I’d merely be giving her the chance to deal with whatever seems to be going on just now with Alastair. You really dislike her, don’t you, Rory? She’s not mentioned Fiona, has she?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “It’s just that she seems to have a deeper curiosity about people than I’ve encountered before. I think she looks into anyone I associate with as a means of protecting me.”

  “‘Looks into’? How?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. She certainly asks a lot of questions.”

  “About me?”

  “About everyone I know or meet. But it’s always with my alleged safety in mind.”

  “As if you need protecting. Where on earth would she get the idea you’re wanting a watchdog?”

  Clare shook her head, turning from the view to look at Rory once again. She said, “I don’t know. But she’s not said anything to you about what happened, has she? She’s not spoken about Fiona?”

  Rory said that she had not.

  Clare said, “And you will tell me if she does?”

  Rory wanted to say, “Why are you asking that? What does it mean?” But speaking of Fiona was always such a peril for her that instead she said, “You’re not to worry about me. She might surprise me at some point by coming out of nowhere with something she knows about me that I don’t realise she knows, but she can’t harm me with it. What happened happened. It’s not a secret.”

  Clare returned to her chair, then. She plopped down in it, scooped up the wine bottle, poured them each another glass, which finished it off. She said, “I want you to find someone, Rory. You’re meant to be part of a couple.”

  Rory made herself chuckle. She tilted the glass in a salute to the other woman, saying, “As you’ve said before. But I can’t believe you of all people are recommending it. Not after Looking for Mr. Darcy or, in my case, Ms. Darcy.”

  “I’m not declaring you’d live happily ever after if you found someone,” Clare countered. “Just that you would live more fully than you’ve been living these last few years.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?” Clare looked out at the darkness once more. “Good God,” she said quietly, “the last thing on earth I want is a partner.”

  11 AUGUST

  SHAFTESBURY

  DORSET

  India didn’t give Nat Thompson the word that she was going
down to Dorset with Charlie. She told herself there was no need. As she intended to drive in a separate car—all the better to depart more easily when the memorial’s dedication was over—she wasn’t exactly going with Charlie anyway.

  They left town in a convoy of two cars, picking their way through South London to the M3. From there they made good time as there was little traffic, and they arrived in Shaftesbury just before lunch. As the dedication of Will’s memorial wasn’t set till three o’clock, they had far more time to kill together than India would have liked. But when Charlie suggested a meal at the Mitre, she could hardly say no without seeming unfriendly.

  The Mitre stood not far from the fan of paving that indicated Shaftesbury’s market square. It was just along the way from the grim visage of St. Peter’s Church and built from the same limestone, blackened from lichen and the damp. A sign in front of the inn told them that every Monday was quiz night and that everyone had a chance at the jackpot. It also declared that the specials of the day were cottage pie, fresh cod and chips, and roast with sprouts and new potatoes, although the sign was vague as to what was being roasted.

  India followed Charlie inside. She wasn’t hungry. She was instead quite uneasy of stomach. Intent upon not giving Charlie the wrong idea about anything she said or did, she’d been finding herself at sea with him since he’d arrived in Camberwell, rung her bell, and said with too much false heartiness, “Ready to set off into the wilds of Dorset?” when she answered. She could tell it was a new Charlie attempting unsuccessfully to channel the Charlie of old.

  Now, they made their way into the pub, where Charlie fetched them menus from the bar. “Absolutely starving,” he told her. “What about you? Want the roast?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. My weight, you know,” she said dismissively. “I’ve got to watch it.”

  “Why?” He asked the question lightly but then added to its significance by saying, “Nat likes his women too rich and too thin?”

  She looked up from her menu and he seemed to read her expression because he said, “Sorry. None of my business. Only . . . it is, more or less.”

  “We’re not meant to talk about it, Charlie.”

  “What? That you’re my wife and you’re sleeping with another man?”

  “I’m not—”

  “Which part, India? My wife or India having a new lover?”

  She pushed back from the table. He said quickly, “I’m sorry. I promised myself. Don’t go. I won’t . . .” He clutched the ubiquitous metal container of mustard that sat with the brown sauce, the salt, and the pepper on the table. “I didn’t mean . . . Look, it just slipped out. I’ll be . . . What’s the word I want? Good. Yes. I’ll be good.”

  She said, “I wasn’t leaving, just going to order.”

  “Let me do that.”

  “I prefer to pay on my own.”

  She went to do this, and he followed her. But he stood back and let her place her order and pay for her food—a bowl of tomato soup, a bread roll, and a bottle of Perrier—and he did the same when she’d completed her transaction. He said nothing else till they were seated again, and then he kept the conversation light, a tale about a very rough night with the Samaritans and then another about a fellow volunteer at the Battersea home for dogs. Both were designed to illustrate Charlie Goldacre getting back to his old life.

  India wanted to tell him not to try so hard. She wanted to explain to him that sometimes too much water passed beneath the bridge, and she was trying to learn if this was the case for them. She needed him to know that it was taking her time to understand herself, her reactions to him, the reasons she’d lost the self that she was when they were together, and, above all, why she was finding Nat Thompson compelling in ways Charlie had never been. But she couldn’t do that without taking them too near to the despair that he was attempting to hide from her. So she listened to as much as she could bear and she nodded and said, “I’m so glad, Charlie,” and when it finally reached the point that she felt she could bear no more of his false good cheer without her heart cracking, she covered his hand with hers and said, “Don’t. It hurts me to see you like this, just as much as it hurt me to see you inert on the sofa week after week.”

  This, of course, cut him dead. He was completely silent for a nearly unendurable forty-five seconds before he smiled briefly and said, “Sometimes I come face-to-face with the fact that you don’t know the first thing about me.”

  India set her spoon down. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m fine.” And to her expression, which she knew was caught somewhere between compassion and exasperation, he said, “All right. Perhaps not altogether fine but on my way back to being fine, which is something I’d think you’d support.”

  “I’m trying to be supportive. Please let’s not quarrel.”

  He sat back in his chair, looking round as if he sought someone to whom he could make his next declaration. “I don’t know who you are any longer. Nat’s woman, perhaps?”

  “I’m not someone’s appendage, Nat’s or yours.”

  “What you are is my wife. How did you put it? ‘I’m who and where I want to be today and into the future, beloved of you as you are of me.’ Weren’t those your matrimonial words?”

  “Please,” she repeated. “Don’t do this. Let’s have this day and be at peace with each other.”

  “And after today?”

  “Why can’t you allow me not to know just now?”

  He thought about this. The pub door opened, letting in a welcome breath of fresh summer air, bringing with it a group of walkers with rucksacks on their backs and sticks in their hands. They were happy and noisy and “bloody hungry enough to eat a sow and her litter, eh?” They glanced in the direction of India and Charlie and nodded their greetings as people do.

  Charlie said, perhaps because of their presence, perhaps because he meant it, “I apologise, India. Thank you for coming. It means a great deal to me and it’ll mean the same to Mum.”

  India accepted this at face value. “Does she know yet?” She indicated the out-of-doors, by which she meant the memorial and the ceremony to come.

  “She’s not got a clue, if Clare Abbott’s to be believed. I’ve no idea how Clare’s managed to put everything together without Mum finding out, though. She’s always been a champion when it comes to discovering things she’s not meant to know.”

  SHAFTESBURY

  DORSET

  When Charlie and India arrived at the site of the memorial for Will, something of a crowd had gathered. Charlie knew most of them as they worked for his stepfather, both in Alastair’s bakery and in his seven shops across Dorset where he sold his baked goods. Among them was the middle-aged widow who managed these businesses for Alastair, and arranged near her were the ladies of Shaftesbury’s Women’s League, always identifiable by the hats they wore to any occasion deemed remotely suitable for headgear.

  Breach Lane was the location of the spring into which Clare Abbott had invested funds in exchange for being allowed to place a memorial to Will within the immediate area. She’d managed to create from the space something that Will would have loved, Charlie saw. Indeed, Will might have designed it himself. The spring now flowed into a rocky pool before spilling naturally over it and on its way down the hill, and paving stones of greensand carved with the markings of moving water made an area for simple limestone benches. A garden of grasses and shrubbery had been planted, and in the midst of this a large boulder stood, covered by a green tarpaulin at the moment but presumably the cenotaph for Charlie’s brother.

  The mayor of Shaftesbury was there, decked out in her mayoral chain. The town council was accounted for as well. So were Clare and a woman with a black-and-tan dog of indeterminate breed, both of whom stuck closely at Clare’s side. Charlie went to greet them, first extending his arm to India. He was grateful when she took it. They crossed an area of summer-dead grass a
nd were introduced to Rory Statham and Arlo, her dog.

  He said to Clare, “How’d you ever manage all this without Mum knowing? She doesn’t know, does she?”

  “Far as I can tell, she’s still completely in the dark.” Clare, he saw, was wearing her habitual black. Rather unfortunately crumpled, it was all linen in answer to the day’s warmth, and her grey hair was ponytailed haphazardly. “She’s not been into work today, which gave me a bit of a scare, but I phoned up Alastair and he assured me he’d get her here one way or another.”

  “Not ill, is she?” Charlie asked.

  “Honestly? I think they may have had some sort of set-to, she and Alastair. He was rather cagey about it all. ‘Not herself today’ was how he put it.” Clare gave a glance to her companion as she said this. Rory Statham remained expressionless. “Anyway, Alastair’s bringing her on some pretext. Had she come to work, I could have walked her down from the house, but as it is . . . Ah. I think he’s coming just now. Lovely to meet you, India. I’ve saved you two places in the front. If you’ll excuse me . . .”

  Charlie nodded. Clare strode off to meet his mother as she got out of the van, her friend Rory remaining behind, as silent as before. She picked up her dog and meditatively rubbed her fingers through the long hairlike fur on his tousled head. She watched the action of Caroline’s arrival.

  Once he’d parked the bakery van in which they’d arrived, Alastair hastened round the side of it to open the door for Charlie’s mum. He extended his hand to her. She ignored it. As a result, she heaved herself gracelessly from the vehicle, which Charlie knew would embarrass her, particularly as people were watching expectantly.

  At first, she seemed puzzled as she took in the scene: the white canopy stretching over a broken horseshoe of four rows of chairs with a central aisle, the people smiling and waiting in all their finery, the mayor at the very front of the crowd, and then the spring with its new surrounding garden. Finally, her gaze found Charlie and India and her expression altered. A light seemed to come into her face, and she quickened her pace past Clare, past the waiting people, past the mayor and the town council and the ladies of the Women’s League in order to get to Charlie and his wife.