An Evil Streak

by An Evil Streak (retail) (epub)

  She smiled. ‘I’m not planning to use your name very often anyway,’ she said. ‘I don’t like names much, I don’t find them very useful. There’s no doubt we’re talking to each other, so what do we need names for?’

  ‘Quite.’ It occurred to me that she was perhaps slightly mad, but in a very logical way that appealed to me. I began to like her and my apprehension eased. ‘Nevertheless, I intend to use your name a lot,’ I said, with more of my old glib style, ‘because it’s so pretty.’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ she said, as one might remark on the weather. ‘It’s the prettiest thing about me. Not as pretty as her name, though. Gemma.’

  The name fell between us like a challenger’s gauntlet.

  ‘Now that really is a pretty name,’ she went on smoothly. ‘Does it suit her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I thought it probably would. David usually chooses pretty girls. I think it’s because he’s so pretty himself, it’s a kind of mirror thing. I was an aberration on his part, but that was so long ago, he hadn’t really got his eye in.’

  Then she shut up and stared at me. Was I supposed to contradict her? She was certainly not pretty but there was something obliquely attractive about her. However, in my (albeit limited) experience, that is not the kind of remark that passes for a compliment among women.

  ‘Well, Catherine,’ I said uneasily, glancing at my watch, ‘can I give you some coffee? Or a drink?’

  It was twenty-five to twelve. I could hardly believe it. Only five minutes had passed.

  She said, ‘Thank you. I’d like a large scotch. I drink rather a lot, I should warn you, but I never get drunk. It seems rather a waste.’

  I poured the scotch, and gin for myself. She declined soda or water.

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘Neat.’

  I splashed tonic into my gin; I needed all the courage I could get, no matter from what source. I added one ice cube and then I added some more gin.

  ‘Thank you.’ She took a large mouthful of scotch: no one could have called it a sip, and a gulp suggests panic, which she was obviously far from feeling. ‘Well,’ she said, lighting a fresh cigarette from the stump of the old one, just like David, ‘I suppose I should come to the point. All I really want is to save your poor niece from my husband.’

  I swallowed gin and tonic and gin rather rapidly.

  ‘Unless she wants to suffer, of course. If she does, she’s really chosen the right person.’

  I leaned back in my chair. ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘Well, if you care for her at all, you’ll want to save her too.’ She downed some more scotch. ‘Oh, it’s not entirely his fault. Being out of work so much doesn’t help. If someone would actually pay him to create drama, he wouldn’t need so much of it in his spare time. But since all his time is spare, as it were, what else can he do to justify his existence? I almost feel sorry for him at times.’

  ‘And for Gemma?’ I was beginning to enjoy myself.

  ‘Oh yes.’ She looked surprised. ‘Of course. She’s not to blame. David can be quite irresistible when he chooses. He even was to me, once, though it’s hard to remember now.’ She drained her glass. ‘Funny thing really. He’s a very good actor in private life. It’s only when he’s working that he’s so bad. I suppose that’s why people don’t employ him very often. It does seem ironic, doesn’t it? He spends his life acting, he really ought to earn his living at something else. That’s why I’m so glad he’s got this cleaning job.’ She looked round again appreciatively. ‘I mean, this room is beautifully clean. What a pity he thinks it’s beneath his dignity as a career.’

  Her monologue had been delivered in a calm, reflective voice as if I were in her consulting room, not she in my home, and we were discussing a patient.

  I asked, ‘Then why does he do it so well?’

  ‘Because he’s acting the part of a cleaner. You’re just lucky he’s chosen to act a good one.’

  I reached out a hand for her empty glass. ‘Catherine,’ I said, ‘let me get you another drink.’

  ‘That would be lovely. You see, I talk a lot as well.’

  I poured her another large scotch and topped up my gin.

  ‘Thank you. Actually, you seem to drink as fast as I do.’

  I was startled by this observation, coming from someone who thought it impolite to use my Christian name. ‘Sometimes,’ I said cautiously.

  ‘I’m always cheered when I meet another drinker. It’s one of the few things David and I have in common – apart from the children, that is. Of course he always says I drove him to drink. That’s one of the best things about marriage – having someone to blame.’

  Again she stopped and stared at me. ‘You’re not married yourself.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, well, it doesn’t suit everyone. Oh dear, I’m getting off the point again.’ She paused and swallowed half the scotch in her glass. ‘Look. About your niece. She really is going to get hurt, you know. We’ve got to do something.’

  I said, ‘You mentioned a letter.’

  ‘Yes, I thought the last one was a lot more steamed up than the others. I probably should have rung you sooner but the kids have had sore throats and it slipped my mind.’

  It was my turn to stare at her. ‘Do you always read your husband’s letters?’

  ‘Not the boring ones on the mantelpiece, no. Only the ones he tucks away in his pockets. He knows I go through his pockets, that’s why he leaves his love letters there.’

  ‘You mean he wants you to read them?’

  ‘I imagine he must do. That way we both know what’s going on without the effort of talking about it. Much easier.’

  ‘I thought you said you liked talking.’

  ‘Oh, only to strangers, not to David. Not after ten years. I mean – we’ve said it all. What is there left to say? I think most of the pleasure in conversation comes from the novelty, don’t you? Now you’re a novelty. It’s usually husbands and fathers I have to go and see. I haven’t had an uncle before.’

  I refilled both our glasses without asking, since it was obviously going to be necessary.

  ‘You make a habit of this?’

  ‘Well, David does, so why shouldn’t I? Look, I don’t think you realise how serious it is. Your niece is all set to fall in love with my husband.’

  We were agreed on that at least. Joy sang in my heart.

  ‘She told me it was just a casual affair,’ I said innocently.

  ‘Oh, he always starts them off like that. If they’re married they feel safe and if they’re not married, it’s a challenge. Then after a few weeks he turns on the heat and suddenly it’s a great love.’

  I considered this with interest. ‘D’you mean he falls in love too?’

  She shrugged and poured more of my scotch down her throat. I wondered if I should put the decanter near her so she could help herself and save me all the bother of getting up and down so often. But it seemed a discourteous idea.

  ‘God knows,’ she said. ‘I can’t tell what goes on in his head. Sometimes he pretends he doesn’t love them when he does and sometimes he tells them he does love them when he doesn’t – I don’t know, I can’t keep track of it. He’s always acting and turning all his feelings inside out. It’s that mirror thing again. That’s how I think of him really. Permanently in front of a mirror. Admiring himself and reversing everything. It’s all opposites. Left for right. And it feeds his ego. Maybe if he was working all the time he wouldn’t do it so much.’

  There was a pause. Predictably, she finished her drink.

  ‘You must love him very much,’ I ventured, ‘to go to all this trouble.’

  ‘Love?’ she said reflectively. ‘What’s that? I like a quiet life. Every time he has one of these affairs some wretched woman goes berserk and I don’t get a moment’s peace for months. They ring up at all hours, they take overdoses, they come and weep all over me begging me to divorce him and their men get cross and beat him up and then he can’t
work.’

  A memory stirred. ‘Really? Who did that?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t he tell you? That woman in Golders Green, her husband caught him in bed with her and gave him the hiding of his life.’ She frowned. ‘I rang you. It was you he couldn’t work for that day. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Mrs Salmon,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the one. Nice woman but she went off her head. Must have been the menopause, poor thing. And her husband was such a big man.’

  ‘I thought she was a widow.’

  Catherine Meredith smiled. ‘Oh, is that what he told you?’

  ‘But why? Such a pointless lie …’

  ‘Well, he has to keep in practice. Like saying he’s twenty-eight when he’s thirty-two. Besides, it probably sounded more flattering – rich widow desperate for sex. Better than married woman having a bit on the side.’

  ‘Like Gemma.’

  ‘Exactly. You see how I get off the point. Now he’ll have to turn that into something dramatic, he’s bound to, he really needs it, and she sounds like a pushover – can’t you do something to stop it before she gets hurt?’

  I poured us both drinks. My head was beginning to swim, but Catherine Meredith, as promised, seemed perfectly sober.

  ‘But what if she wants to go on with it?’ I said. ‘Who am I to interfere?’

  She sighed. ‘The one before Mrs Salmon jumped out of a window and broke her leg,’ she said. ‘Do you really want your niece to do that?’

  I said gravely, ‘I think I can promise you she won’t do that.’

  ‘Well, she’ll do something. They all do. David only picks women like that. I don’t know how he can tell but he can. One of them crashed her car into our garden and set it on fire. A woman who just shrugged her shoulders and said better luck next time, now she wouldn’t be any use to him. Where’s the satisfaction in that?’

  ‘You talk as if all the affairs have to end badly.’

  She looked at me as though I were stupid. ‘Well, of course they have to end badly. Otherwise all these silly women wouldn’t feel desperate, would they?’

  I said craftily, ‘But what if one of them rejected him?’

  She shook her head. ‘Oh no. That never happens. He can see it coming a mile off – he’s got a sort of radar. No, he always gets in first.’

  I rose unsteadily to my feet. My watch had stopped, but an enormous amount of time seemed to have passed and I was ravenously hungry, my stomach awash with nearly neat gin.

  I said, ‘Catherine, can I offer you some lunch?’

  She looked startled. ‘Oh no, I never eat during the day. But you go ahead.’

  Considering the amount of whisky she had consumed, I marvelled that she even got through the day.

  ‘I thought I might make myself an omelette,’ I said feebly.

  To my surprise she suddenly stood up. ‘I expect you’d like me to go now,’ she said. She seemed to specialise in the unanswerable.

  ‘You must do exactly as you wish.’ I thought longingly of eggs and butter.

  ‘But you won’t do anything to save her.’ She began moving about the room in small circles that were obscurely threatening, as if she might spring on me at a moment’s notice.

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Well, you could try giving David the sack. Then they wouldn’t have anywhere to meet. That would be a great help.’

  ‘That would make my niece unhappy. Besides, you said yourself how efficient your husband is. I don’t want to lose him. And you can’t want him to be out of work.’

  ‘That agency would find you another cleaner. And they’d find him another job. It would really make everything much simpler.’

  I said, ‘They’d only meet somewhere else.’

  She eyed me strangely. ‘I’m not so sure. David’s very lazy – he hates making arrangements and asking favours of people – and he’s much too mean to take her to a hotel. He usually sees them in their own homes when their husbands are out but he can’t in this case, can he? So it all comes back to you.’

  A chill of fear, temporarily held at bay by the gin, began to creep back.

  ‘There’s something odd about you,’ she went on, quite casually. ‘There’s something odd about this flat. I get the feeling we’ve been at cross purposes the whole time. We’re not talking about the same thing at all.’

  Through the haze of protective alcohol, some paradoxical maxim about the interchangeable nature of attack and defence floated luckily into my mind.

  ‘You mean in reality you’re a jealous wife wanting revenge and you’re only pretending you want to save my niece.’

  She laughed quite heartily. She really was the most annoying woman. I could see I would have to make an ally out of her somehow, so as not to lose out utterly. The laughter was incongruous, seeming too strongly coloured with emotion to belong to such a neutral person.

  ‘Oh really,’ she said, ‘you can do better than that. You’re up to something, aren’t you? I thought so all along, the funny way David talked about you. Is it something to do with writing, is that it? Are you collecting material or something?’

  ‘Far from it.’

  ‘If I hadn’t read her letters I’d think you were all having a jolly little threesome. But that’s not it. She’s not that kind of girl, is she? I mean, those letters – they’re so innocent. Positively childish.’

  I said, ‘I really will have to see about that omelette now.’ She smiled. ‘All right, I’m going.’ I began to follow her to the door. Suddenly she turned round to face me, so suddenly that I nearly fell over her. ‘You don’t fancy him, do you?’

  To my horror I heard myself saying, ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You know. He’s had several offers. You might be gay for all I know – I can’t always tell. In fact I’ve often wondered if David is and doesn’t want to admit it. Might account for him chasing so many women. At least, that’s what it says in books.’

  I managed to say, ‘My dear lady, what an extraordinary idea.’

  She shrugged and turned away. ‘Oh well, I’ll find out eventually. I always do.’

  I accompanied her to the door, furious to find myself the victim of such a banal response as my heart knocking against my rib-cage loudly enough, it seemed, for her to hear it. She paused on the doorstep and held out her hand. I was obliged to take it; it was icy cold. I tried not to tremble at her touch.

  ‘Thanks for the scotch,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It was very good scotch.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was.’

  She smiled. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘has he told you his life story yet?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Try not to let him. It takes hours and he comes out a cross between Winston Churchill and Oliver Twist.’

  * * *

  The feast day came and Gemma arrived early. I was reminded of the far-off days of Christopher the eager puppy, when she had felt confident enough to be late. I put the finishing touches to the table. Gemma hovered. We were both nervously excited.

  ‘It looks beautiful,’ she said.

  ‘I hope so.’

  We both stared at it as if to make sure it did not change before our eyes.

  ‘It’s fantastic,’ she said. She kept darting off to brush her hair in front of the mirror and apply more scent. She smelled so delicious it was all I could do not to pounce on her.

  ‘I’ve got him a silk dressing-gown,’ she said. ‘I do hope he’ll like it.’

  ‘He’ll love it,’ I said, indignant at any other possibility. ‘How could he fail to love it?’

  She looked at me with the same big frightened eyes as in the old days when I had read her X-certificate fairy tales. ‘It’s Christmas. Our first Christmas. I couldn’t bear it to be a failure.’

  ‘In my spare room,’ I said, ‘how could it be?’

  She froze; then exploded with joy. ‘You darling. Have you really?’ She hugged me and I felt for a moment the wildness of her that he knew and I did not; her scent
made me dizzy. ‘May I look?’

  ‘I’ll be most offended if you don’t. I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble.’

  She ran off like a child to find a toy. I followed her slowly, followed the cries of delight that were coming from my spare room, no longer spare but filled with a sense of purpose she had once hoped to get from growing her hair.

  ‘Oh, it’s marvellous. You’ve done wonders. It’s all new.’

  I stood in the doorway looking suitably modest. ‘I’ve added a few things here and there.’

  ‘You’re an angel.’

  She looked about to burst into tears. I reflected how beautiful she was. I had not been wrong when I looked at that child of four: she had been worth waiting for. No wonder we all wanted to possess her.

  I said, ‘I think I’ll go now. Before he comes.’

  She seized me by the arm. ‘Oh no. Stay and have a drink with us.’

  ‘I’d really rather not. I’ve been told I drink too much – and anyway, all this emotion, at my age it’s bad for the heart.’

  She studied me while I got into my coat, my winter favourite, mutton got up as Persian lamb.

  ‘You put on such a cynical act,’ she said tenderly, ‘to hide how kind you are.’

  ‘Just remember to take the roast out at one o’clock.’

  * * *

  I went to see Gone With the Wind for the fourth time and sat there, an exile from home, analysing my reactions to Catherine Meredith, while Scarlett pursued Ashley, Rhett pursued Scarlett, and Melanie smiled at everyone. It was comforting to have a familiar background against which to do my thinking. When you have seen a film four times in thirty years, it becomes like reading a diary: yourself when young springs out of every frame.

  I wanted to find out more about David and Catherine, but if I did it would be superfluous information: I could not incorporate it into my design. Criseyde had been a widow; well, that was all right. It was both easy and pleasant to imagine Christopher dead. But it was not fitting that Troilus should have a wife. She gave him a less romantic, more homespun image; she might upset all my plans; she represented events beyond my control. And she had brought a most unwelcome blast of cold air into my carefully nurtured hot-house atmosphere, with her careless talk of broken legs and burning cars. A note of ridicule indeed. My tender plants might not survive the icy breath of laughter. How dare she mock all I had struggled so long and so hard to create with true high seriousness: my own private living work of art.