A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “You’ve not asked me to leave her,” he said. “Why? We meet over and over, you and me. And you’ve not asked me. You’ve not even told me to move her somewhere else so you and I c’n be what we want to be to each other.”

  “What is it we want to be to each other, then?” She set down the pencil and laid her hand over his, fingers curling through his that were splayed, her palm soft on the back of his hand. He felt a stirring at this gesture, so tiny and insignificant. The top of her hand was lightly freckled. He wanted to kiss it.

  He said, “You know what we want to be.”

  Her fingers tightened. “Alastair, listen. We don’t have to be so traditional. We needn’t be husband and wife, with you making an honest woman of me. Times have changed and we’re happy, aren’t we? Just like we are?”

  “Do I look happy here, Shar?” He gestured round the office in which they sat, but he knew she would understand that he meant his life with Caroline.

  Her face altered to concern. Seeing this, Alastair thought how there was nothing at all sly about Sharon’s face. She was an open book.

  She got up from her chair and went to look out of the window of the little bakery office. She gazed beyond the glass to what could be seen, which was Will’s garden and then the house. He wanted to tell her that Caroline wasn’t in at the moment if that was what she feared, but before he could say this, she turned back to him.

  She said, “Things’re rough for you just now. But could be this is only an uneven patch you’re in.”

  “You,” he said.

  “Are you saying I’m the uneven patch?”

  “I’m saying you’re all I think about. You’re in my blood. It’s like you became me, Shar, and I became you and now we’re inside each other’s body. And don’t tell me it’s not like that for you cos if you tell me it’s nothing but a laugh, I don’t know what I’ll do.” At the end of saying this, he understood for the first time all the ways in which men are driven to act by what some might call their baser natures but what he knew very well was a desire to be joined to another’s existence in such a way that nothing could ever rend the fabric of what they created between them.

  Sharon’s eyes widened behind her specs, which she took off and cleaned on the edge of the skirt she was wearing, “Romantic, that’s what you are. I wouldn’t’ve thought it.”

  “What would you’ve thought?”

  “Rough-and-tumble bloke with lots of flour about him,” she said.

  He felt immediately crestfallen, and he understood that he must have looked it as well, for Sharon said, “Alastair, don’t look like that. It’s the same for me, how I feel, I mean. Only things’re difficult for you and let’s not make them worse.”

  “How can they be worse?” His voice was low, as he was speaking mostly to himself.

  She answered nonetheless. “By wishing for what can’t be just now. You and me know you’re caught by her for the moment, but let’s not talk of it.”

  “How c’n I do that when I can’t even think ’less I’m . . . It’s like I’m not even alive if I’m not with you and what’s that about? It was never like that with—”

  “Don’t say that!” she declared. “Don’t make an issue of ‘she’s like this and you’re like that and it’ll kill me if I don’t rid myself of this bloody millstone round my neck.’ That’ll send you mad. Let things just be for now. I’m not going anywhere. I haven’t been going anywhere for years.”

  “Bet your kids tell you to move along.”

  “My kids know nothing ’bout you. No one does. This is a me-and-you thing, and it’s fine that way.”

  But how could it be? he wondered. It was bloody unnatural to call everything fine.

  He gazed at her. His heart, he found, was pounding like a heart that’s had a scare. He could feel it in the tips of his fingers. He could feel it in his throat and under his arms and most of all—“I want to touch you. I want to kiss you. I’m hard as a limb and you know it, don’t you?”

  “Hush about that, or we’ll not get our work done,” she said. “And if that happens, then—”

  Caroline walked in. She was clearly agitated, and without thinking Alastair jumped to his feet. He saw her gaze drop to the bulge in his trousers. She looked from him to Sharon and he frantically tried to think how to divert her, but she was the one to speak.

  “They’re trying to trap me. They want me to say things when I don’t even know what happened to her. Just that she died of some heart thing. And then they look at me like . . . Why won’t they tell me exactly what happened? I needed you to be there with me so that you could tell them I’m not the sort of woman they apparently think I am. I needed you to take my part. Do you know how that feels? To need someone so desperately by your side while you listen to strangers—to the police, my God—and all the time to know that the reason the person you so passionately need will not attend you is . . . I just can’t.”

  That said, she turned from them and left. The outer door opened and then banged shut and he went to the window and saw her stumbling across the garden, Will’s lovely garden that had been intended to make her so happy.

  Behind him, Alastair heard Sharon say, “I’m that sorry, Alastair. I do wish I could make things different for you.”

  SPITALFIELDS

  LONDON

  India loved what rainfall did to the streets in the waning daylight of autumn, causing the traffic signals to shine in slick pools of rainwater, making the headlamps of passing cars seem to flicker like hesitant beacons. She also liked the odd scents that the sodden air trapped along the thoroughfares: the diesel fumes that she knew would always remind her of London no matter where she might in the future smell them on the wet air of a different environment; the cigarette smoke from those who were forced to see to their habit out on the pavements; the cooking odours from restaurant kitchens she came to as she approached her former home. She could see that the lights were on in the flat. Charlie was waiting for her.

  “Mum’s rung me in a real state,” he’d said. “I know this is asking a lot, India, but could you come over here after work? I do need to talk to you. I’d come to you, but I’ve only an hour between the afternoon and the evening clients. What about you? Have you anything on?”

  She did. She told him frankly and she used Nat’s name because she wanted to hear how Charlie would take it. While she and Nat had not set out a definite time for it, they’d agreed to meet at a corner restaurant not far from St. Paul’s. Whitebait was fried there and Nat loved whitebait and he wanted to demonstrate for India the culinary delight of dipping into a bowl of tiny fish served with great lashings of tartar sauce. So she hadn’t a lot of time. When she explained this to Charlie, he was perfectly reasonable about it.

  “I see,” he said. “Damn. Well, I’m a big boy and I suppose I can cope.”

  “What’s happened?” she asked. “Are Alastair and that woman still . . . Charlie, I’m so sorry but I’ve forgotten her name.”

  “Sharon Halsey. No, it’s not to do with her.”

  “Did he sack her?”

  “He didn’t. Apparently, Mum came to realise that Sharon’s essential to the business, considering how long she’s been employed there. So she’s still working for the bakery and if they’re carrying on together, I haven’t a clue. No, this is to do with the London police. They’re in Shaftesbury.”

  When India asked him what on earth the London police were doing in Shaftesbury, she learned the truth about Clare Abbott’s death: While it was a heart attack, it wasn’t natural. The police weren’t declaring exactly what had occurred, but a second autopsy had revealed details other than those originally named. And now, Clare’s editor Rory Statham was in hospital as well.

  “Good heavens. What’s going on?”

  “Haven’t a clue. But the crux of the matter is that Mum pointed out to me at considerable length that she has a connection to
both of them—to Clare and Rory—and because of this, she’s got it into her head that the police actually suspect her of something. As she hasn’t the first idea why Rory’s in hospital—the poor woman might have had an emergency appendectomy for all she knows—this looks like another Mum drama to me. And, India, I’m almost loath to tell you this part: She’s on her way here.”

  “Your mum? To London?”

  “Hmmm. Yes. So I need to come up with a plan to deal with her. I’d thought you might help. What I mean is that I had a feeling I’d be much more able to contend with her if I’ve had a conversation with you.”

  So she said she’d come to him at the flat, and she arranged a time to meet Nat for whitebait afterwards. Now she unlocked the building’s door, and she went up the stairs. She could hear music playing from within, but when she knocked upon the door, it was shut off and footsteps came down the corridor towards her.

  “Here you are,” Charlie said when he opened the door. “Thank you for coming.”

  India saw he looked good. More and more his appearance was like the Charlie of old. She found she quite liked the look of him: tall and rangy in blue jeans, with an air about him of casual ease. He wore a jacket she’d not seen before and a new pair of shoes as well. He coloured a little as she smiled at him, his cheeks matching the ginger of his hair. “Come in,” he said. “Why’ve you not used your key?”

  It hadn’t seemed right to her, but India had no wish to tell him that. She said instead, “I thought you might still be with a client,” as he beckoned her inside. “And as to the keys, Charlie . . .” But oddly, she couldn’t say what she’d thought she’d be able to say so easily, which was, “Here are the keys to the building and to the flat because the truth of the matter is that you and I actually do know the truth of the matter at this point.”

  Nat, of course, was wondering why she’d not yet said exactly that to Charlie. “When?” he’d whispered only last night as he’d drawn her against him damp and spent and on the edge of dreaming. He’d pushed her hair from her neck and kissed her skin, and his hand cupped her breast, which lay within his palm as if it had been created to rest only there, just there. “Because you know what this is,” he’d murmured, “what we have. You do know.”

  That, however, was just the point. She didn’t know. She only understood that what she had with Nat was very much different from what she’d had with Charlie. But different didn’t mean rare. It was only dressed like rarity, a costume worn by a breathlessly exciting new experience that could wear itself out through repetition.

  Charlie said pleasantly, “As to the keys . . . ?” in that way he had of seeing that something needed to be said and he was the one meant to receive the words.

  She frowned and lied. “The keys . . . It’s quite slipped my mind. How odd. Now tell me everything about your mum.”

  “Will you have something to drink? I’ve laid out . . . well, it’s just in here.” He led her into the sitting room where he’d set up for martinis. The Bombay Sapphire stood on a tray, its blue bottle freshly sweating from the deep freeze where he liked to keep it. There was a bottle of good vermouth as well, and she knew how he’d use it, just a few drops to coat the side of the martini glass. There were also olives in a dish, along with a bowl of salted almonds.

  India felt a little stab, for she recognised all of it, as she was no doubt intended to do. It was their welcome-to-the-evening ritual, although the evening in question had always been a Friday when it wouldn’t matter if one martini slid into two and they went to bed pissed.

  She looked at Charlie. She had dinner with Nat. She’d told him as much. But really, what would it hurt not to disappoint him? He’d gone to trouble, and she could see beyond him into the kitchen where the whiteboard on the wall told her from its neat printing that Charlie was back to volunteering as well, another step in his recovery. Even from here, she could read the headings: Samaritans, Battersea Dogs, among other listings.

  She said, “I did say I can’t be here very long.”

  “You did,” Charlie said. “There’s Nat and dinner. And I’m grateful you’ve come. But I reckoned one drink . . . Or I can make tea. We can talk in the kitchen if that’s better for you. I hadn’t intended . . . Well, that’s not quite true. Everything I do at this point is intended. However”—and this came with his old Charlie smile—“I’m delighted to amaze you with a resurgence of my former, admirable flexibility. Tea, then? I’ve Earl Grey and Assam.”

  She decided that one martini wasn’t going to put her under the table, so she said, “I’ll do the gin instead. But a small one.”

  “I’ve a client later. That’s best for me as well.”

  He set about making the drinks and she glanced round the sitting room. She saw that he’d made some changes. Although the summertime picture of them was still prominently displayed, there were new books of all types and sizes on the bookshelves. He’d also brought in a few pieces of Chinese art: five chops displayed on a purpose-built stand, two sculptures, a long-handled calligraphy brush for painting Chinese characters. There was a new canvas on the wall, a market scene with piles of fruits and a group of Chinese men playing cards. When she’d lived with him, he’d wanted to make these sorts of purchases, but she’d argued against it. Practising medicine from the Orient was enough for her, she’d said. She didn’t want to come home to the Orient. But Charlie had been right when he’d said that art and artifacts from the Orient would work beautifully in an Art Deco flat. They did. Which made her wonder what else her husband had been right about but had allowed himself to be talked out of.

  They were too alike, she and Charlie. Both of them had been too accommodating to others.

  As he mixed the martinis and she watched him do it, India thought about how one comes to know another’s movements. Charlie’s had always been precise: just so much vermouth to swirl in the glass, just so much gin, two olives speared on a pewter toothpick.

  She said to him, “The clients are keeping you busy?” just to say something.

  He glanced her way. “I wish I’d taken your advice on board from the first. I did need to go into therapy myself during the grieving process. I’ve thought about why I wasn’t able to do it, probably more than you could imagine, and the only explanation I have is the obvious one: Will’s death gutted me because I knew I should have been able to prevent it. I failed him, and having to face that asked me to take a look at myself and I didn’t want to do it. I still don’t, to be honest. God. I miss him, India.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “I’ve had to consider what missing him is going to feel like to the end of my life and how missing him is going to colour my world if I choose to allow it.”

  “I’ve said this before, Charlie: You’ve always been too hard on yourself.”

  He looked at her earnestly, seemed to hesitate, but then plunged on with, “India, I want you to know that nothing’s changed for me. Well, that’s not true, is it? I mean everything’s changed but nothing’s changed.”

  “What’s the everything?”

  “You know, I daresay. Will and what that did to me. The loss of you and what that did to me. Going through it all and coming back from it. That’s the everything. You already know the nothing. But in case you don’t . . .”

  “I do,” she said before he could tell her that his love for her was unchanged and was—perhaps surprising to them both—unaffected by the intrusion of another man into her life. Charlie knew that they were lovers, she and Nat. But the fact that he somehow was actually coping with this knowledge . . . India had to admire his determined resilience at the same time as she also knew that had she not walked out on him, he might well still be lying on the sofa in their flat and upon him a coverlet largely made of despair.

  “Well,” he said, “let me be wise and dismiss that for now. The point is: The London police have completely taken over Clare Abbott’s digs in Shaftesbury. F
rom what I was able to get out of Mum when she rang me, they’ve found a website on Clare’s computer having to do with meeting married blokes for sex. The police have spoken to Mum about it.”

  “Why?”

  “Apparently, Clare had been messing about with the site—and with these blokes—but using Mum’s name to do it. To meet married men for sex, I mean.”

  India took this in with her lips parted and her martini raised. She’d had the intention of having some of it, but she set it down instead on the glass top of the coffee table. She was about to ask what on earth was going on when Charlie went on, saying, “Mum thinks the police are looking at this as a motive for her harming Clare.”

  “But how on earth was she supposed to have given Clare a heart attack?”

  Charlie set down his martini as well. India was sitting opposite him, in a low chair across from the sofa. He reached for some almonds and held them in his palm, saying, “After she rang me, I had a look at the statistics on this sort of thing, the kind of research the police might do? My guess is if they’re truly looking at Mum—always open to doubt, let’s face it, Mum being Mum—there must be a poison involved.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “A poison that gives someone a heart attack. Or one that makes it seem someone had a heart attack.”

  “How on earth would your mum ever know about something like that? And even if she did know or found out or whatever . . . why would she kill Clare? For using her name with married men? I see that doing that sort of thing is . . . well, it’s extraordinary, isn’t it? But did your mum even know this was going on? That Clare was using her name?”

  “She says she hadn’t the first clue. She told the police that.”

  “Do you . . . I hate to say this, but do you believe her?”

  “Admittedly, she’s been known to lie. But there’s this situation with Rory Statham—Clare’s editor?—being in hospital here in town.”