‘He probably is – he sounds drunk, as well.’ I couldn’t tell: all French speech was the same to me. ‘He’s talking about Freedom. He’s telling an obscene story, about the first time they – made love.’
The host was looking equal parts enthralled and shocked, and he didn’t try to interrupt. ‘Translate, Claudia.’
‘And she gripped me with her legs, and I possessed her all the way to her delicious teeth,’ said Claudia obediently, ‘and—’
The doorbell rang, Claudia stopped the video, I went downstairs to open the door to Barty. I was still laughing and I began to explain as he followed me back to the flat. ‘Barty, you’ve met Claudia,’ I said. ‘She’s my new assistant.’ He looked surprised – perhaps at me having an assistant, perhaps at it being Claudia – but either way, it wouldn’t hurt for him to know that I could surprise him. They greeted each other warmly, as if the party eviction had created a bond between them.
‘Come and watch the rest of the video,’ I said. ‘We’ll go out for a drink later.’
Claudia had paused the video on a frame of Mouche’s face, decadent and drunk with the faint pause wobble making it seem as if he was shaking, which most of the time he probably was. ‘It’s that fraud Mouche,’ said Barty. ‘The devil with blue eyes.’
‘What?’ I was lost.
‘That is what they call him, in France. Because he is so beautiful,’ said Claudia.
‘Not any more he isn’t,’ I said. ‘And I bet he looks even worse, now.’
‘Why are we watching him?’ said Barty.
‘He’s the father of the boy, Olivier, whose death I’m investigating,’ I said.
‘You didn’t tell me that.’
‘You didn’t ask. You’ve come in at a critical moment. He’s just possessed her up to her perfect teeth,’ I said.
‘Fair enough. Is squeaky-voiced Freedom the owner of the teeth in question?’
‘Yes.’ Barty began to settle himself on the floor between us, and Claudia protested. ‘You can’t sit on the floor! Not in a suit! And it is a very good suit, isn’t it?’
‘A Mother Teresa of suits,’ said Barty. ‘Good enough to put up with a little harsh treatment, I think.’
‘Why are you wearing it?’ I said. Barty dressed formally very seldom: usually only for court appearances, when someone tried to prevent one of his whistle-blowing documentaries being shown.
‘What do you mean, a Mother Teresa of suits?’ said Claudia. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘She’s literal-minded,’ I explained.‘Don’t worry about it, Claudia. Get on with the video, for God’s sake.’
She pressed ‘play’ and we were off Mouche was still talking, the host was aghast and smiling. Most of the studio audience looked stunned: the rest seemed comatose. ‘Translate!’ I demanded.
Claudia and Barty spoke at the same time.
CLAUDIA: I filled her with my angel-milk and she became a slave to love
BARTY: I came inside her and she liked it
CLAUDIA: And of this mating of the gods, beautiful Olivier was created
BARTY: That was when Olivier was conceived
‘Stop the tape!’ I said.‘Hang on. I can’t cope with this simultrans. One or the other of you do it, I don’t mind which.’
Barty bowed to Claudia, across me, ‘Yours is more elegant.’
She bowed back. ‘Yours is more English.’
I grabbed the remote control, ran the tape back, and told Claudia to get on with it. The host was talking. ‘Will the beautiful Freedom like the secrets of her heart to be shared with three million viewers?’ translated Claudia.
‘He’ll be lucky, three million viewers,’ said Barty.
‘Freedom is my love slave,’ said Mouche, through Claudia. It was like a seance, with Claudia’s reedy voice floating over his drunken politically incorrect growl. Then the camera shifted to fix on a tall slender girl in a clinging left-over-seventies jersey dress, who was slinking on to the set leading a beautiful dark-eyed six-year-old boy by the hand. Olivier, before the vodka and the diving-board hit him. He was dressed in a sort of page-boy outfit. Dark, though I couldn’t tell in black and white what shade of dark, velvet and a wide white lace collar, and shiny shoes with buckles. He must have felt a prat, I thought sympathetically, as Mouche lumbered to his feet and picked the boy up in a bear-hug, then started covering his face in kisses, ending up in a kiss on the mouth.
‘Lucky Olivier, to be so loved,’ said Claudia. Barty and I were both cringing. No wonder Olivier had turned to blackmail. If he had.
Mouche was talking, still holding the boy, looking down into his face. ‘Olivier is my life, my soul, my being,’ said Mouche/ Claudia. ‘He is my future, my immortality.’
I felt uncomfortable at the display of drunken emotionalism. ‘Bye-bye future,’ I said.
‘Now father and son will sing,’ said host/Claudia. An amateurish pianist started an intro and then father and son went into an excruciating version of a song I didn’t recognize but Claudia said was Mouche’s. The boy kept missing his words and looking round for help, as if he wanted to escape. Freedom stood by smiling vaguely and tapping her bare, bony feet out of time to the music.
‘She looks out of it, as well,’ I said. She had rather thin, long hair. You couldn’t tell the colour, but it wasn’t dark. ‘What’s the song about?’
‘It’s about Freedom. About how she’s called Freedom because her eyes are the colour of the sky.’
The song finished and father, mother, and son embraced. I paused the video and went to the kitchen to get drinks. Claudia wanted mineral water, Barty and I white wine. Barty called to me, ‘I picked up something for you in the States. Two Sue Graftons and a Sara Paretsky. Remind me to bring them in from the car.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, coming back with the tray.
‘Oh, please, get them now,’ said Claudia. ‘I’d like to see them.’ She was standing by the French window, looking out. Barty and I shouted a warning at the same time:
‘Stop!’
‘Wait!’
She looked puzzled. ‘It’s the balcony,’ I said. ‘It isn’t safe. It isn’t a balcony, it’s a shelf for window-boxes.’
She moved farther into the room, shrugging. ‘I’d love to see your presents,’ she said.
Now Barty looked puzzled, but he stood up obligingly.
‘Don’t bother, Barty,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t know they’re books.’
‘Books?’ said Claudia, cheated. ‘Oh, no, please . . . don’t bother.’
Barty still looked puzzled.‘She thought you’d bought me designer clothes,’ I said.
‘I thought those names were new designers, that I’d never heard of,’ said Claudia blushing. I distributed the drinks and waved at the television to cover her embarrassment: I hate looking a fool, myself, and I’m so half-educated that I often did until I learned to shut up if I wasn’t sure. The video was still paused on Mouche, Freedom, and Olivier. I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘Family group. Does anything strike you?’
Barty chipped in immediately.‘I’ve never liked Mouche.Drunken fraud. The woman’s a nonentity, and I don’t trust people who change their names.’
‘Especially because their eyes are the colour of the sky,’ I said at random.
Then it hit us both at once. Barty choked on his wine: I gasped: we stared at little Olivier staring at us.
‘What is it?’ said Claudia. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Genetics,’ said Barty.
‘Mendel and the peas,’ I said.‘Two blue-eyed people can’t produce a brown-eyed child. Not even in a mating of the gods.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
It didn’t take Barty and me long to calm down and work out that the Great Olivier Discovery didn’t get my enquiry much further forward. Apart from everything else, it was so obvious that it must have been commented on before. Surely Michel Mouche couldn’t not have known. Perhaps his harping on, and on television yet, about his paternity
of Olivier was a gigantic bluff, or at the least an attempt to cover his insecurity over the issue.
Either way, I didn’t see how it fitted in with the information I had, or explained any of my unanswered questions.
Claudia was so excited that she insisted on telling Barty the whole story from the beginning, about Olivier and Rissington Abbey. When she started on Martin Kelly I shook my head, and she ground to a halt. Barty was getting restive. By this time it was nearly eleven o’clock and I expected him to go home, but he obviously wanted to talk to me alone.
‘Let’s go out for a drink,’ he said.
I didn’t want to be inside and I didn’t want a drink. I wanted to be outside. I wanted to have an element of freedom, a possible escape when Barty broke whatever unpleasant news Barty was going to break. He knew I had an early plane to catch: I kept yawning: it wasn’t like him to push it unless he really needed to get it over with. Anything personal with that degree of urgency about it couldn’t be good news, I reckoned.
Claudia almost scooped me out, eventually. She, like Polly, seemed to take an interest in my love-life. I don’t know why I attract that kind of interference. I don’t invite it.
It was almost cool, in Hyde Park. We were walking south-west from Marble Arch, towards the Serpentine. I like the Park at night but seldom go there alone. Polly’s persuaded me it’s foolhardy. We were walking in as close to silence as you ever get in Central London.
After ten minutes we reached the Serpentine and started to skirt it. The café was just closing: eleven o’clock, it would be. All the boats were in. The few people left were drifting back to their cars, the ducks had gone wherever they go at night, leaving slimy droppings on the paths to remind us of their existence.
‘Permission to speak?’ said Barty.
‘What?’
‘Can I talk?’
‘Sure. My ears have recovered from Claudia’s assault.’
‘She’s a nice kid. With a crush on you.’
‘Not specifically me. She’s got a crush on Life and the Media, and how she’s going to eat it up and spit it out.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Barty. ‘Anyway, she’s very excited about the Great Olivier Discovery.’
‘Yeah. It doesn’t make much difference, as far as I can see, whose child he was. It’s very common, as well. I saw a statistic somewhere – research, in the West Country I think – twenty per cent of babies born in one hospital couldn’t have been their official father’s child.’ ‘Why’ve you taken on an assistant, Alex? I thought you couldn’t afford it.’
‘I can’t afford not to. She’s paying me, to train her. Don’t worry, it’s just a whim of hers, and we’re only doing a week, and I know, what kind of training can I give her?’
‘She’s lucky.’
I stopped by a bench. ‘Why don’t we sit down, and then you can say whatever you were going to say? I’ve got to catch an early plane.’ I sat down, but he didn’t. He stood with his hands in his pockets, frowning.
‘I wanted to talk to you. About Miranda, among other things.’
Miranda’s his ex-wife.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘How is she?’
‘Better. She’s going back to her own place tomorrow.’
That hit me. Hard. I was ready to hear that they were going to give it another go, as soon as he mentioned her name. I was armoured for that and what I actually heard slipped under my defences. ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Do sit down. You’re towering over me.’ It wasn’t like him to be tense.
‘I wanted you to know that.’
‘Now I do, what do you want me to say?’
He sighed impatiently. ‘I want to have a conversation with you. You know, a conversation, where two people explain things to each other and reach an understanding.’
‘I thought we did.’
‘No. You didn’t. You can’t. You’re not stupid. You must know that when we talk you behave like Ronald Colman dancing up and down the castle steps in the duel in The Prisoner of Zenda.’
‘That was before my time. I only saw the remake, on a Sunday afternoon. With Richard Todd.’
‘Stewart Granger,’ he corrected automatically. I didn’t pursue it. I knew he’d be right, about Stewart Granger. Of course he was right about me.
Silence. I looked to my right, towards the stone that commemorated the help we’d given to some Scandinavian country during the war. Must be odd to remember a time when Britain was in a position to help the Scandinavians. I nearly asked Barty if he remembered which country it was and what we’d done for them, then realized he’d think it was another piece of rapier-waving. Which it might have been.
‘I don’t know any history,’ I said. ‘Not really. Not the kind you used to get taught as a matter of course, about what happened in England, and why the war finished us. We did Colonialism and Post-Colonialism in Africa.’
He sat down beside me. ‘That’s history too,’ he said.
‘Not mine. And there weren’t any facts in it. Lots of empathy. I got top marks for my project. Diary of a Yoruba Tribeswoman.’
‘Did you win a gold star?’
‘You must be joking. Competition? Dirty word. We had no stars, not to stick on our work, not to look up to.’
‘Do you resent it?’
‘Not really. The teachers meant well. They just weren’t very bright, or the theory was wrong, or something. They spent all their time trying to help us emotionally, which they couldn’t, and they didn’t teach us anything, which they maybe could. Which is why I can empathize with anything except an educated white middle-class male.’
‘That’s too neat to be true,’ he said gently.
‘It’s too true to be ignored.’
More silence. We both pretended to watch a man in a mackintosh walk past. A mackintosh? In this weather?
‘Flasher?’ I said.
‘Probably . . . Alex, you’ve got an early plane.’
‘I just said that . . . Why are you in a suit? Were you in court today?’
‘That was the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. The project I’ve been working on. Why I didn’t involve you. Why I didn’t hire you.’
‘Don’t tell me, you’ve found a better researcher.’
‘There aren’t any better . . . Some as good, though.’
‘Name them.’
‘If you’re so smart, guess what I’ve been working on.’
‘Worst possible scenario?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dangerous, or just likely to lead to weeks in court followed by months in prison?’
‘Both.’
I’d thought we were half joking. Now, I saw he wasn’t, and kept asking. ‘In America? East Coast?’
‘And Chicago, and LA.’
‘This side of the Atlantic, as well?’
‘Yes.’
I thought I knew, but I couldn’t believe that anybody I liked could be so stupid. Not even Don Quixote O’Neill, padded by inherited money, floating on aristocratic insouciance. ‘Earth to Barty. Come in, please,’ I said blankly. ‘Tell me we’re not talking about the American funding of the IRA.’
‘We are.’
‘Oh, shit,’ I said. ‘At least tell me you’re employed by a big, big, well-insured production company, who’ll pay your legal fees.’
‘No.’
‘Your own project?’
‘Yes.’
I was speechless. No wonder he hadn’t told me anything about it. Partly to protect me, maybe: more because I’d have given him such a hard time. Rule one, never mix with the IRA. They’re unstable, ruthless, bigoted . . . Rule two, if you must, make sure you’re backed by big money. If you get anywhere with the IRA, the British security services want to know about it. They want names and dates and places and they take your material and they prevent it being shown so you can’t even cover the seed money you spent researching it, and they take you to court if you don’t do what they want and the legal fees can be horrendous. That doesn’t so much worry the British government
, who are backing the other side. But for a single small operator, they can wipe you out. Barty wasn’t even really rich, I didn’t think. He was rich by my standards, but not seriously rich. Not funding legal fees without thinking twice rich. And if he was in prison it wouldn’t exactly help his business.
‘You’ve been working on the one project all this year?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ve been funding yourself?’
‘Yes.’
I thought about it. It explained a lot. Not everything: he hadn’t been in touch with me for other reasons as well. ‘And you didn’t get in touch with me, also, because of your ex-wife?’
‘I hadn’t heard from Miranda for a year when she turned up, sobbing, two days before your party. I was giving you time to think. About me. Did you think about me?’
‘Of course.’
‘What did you think?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Did you miss me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
He stood up. ‘Right. Time you went home.’
I kept sitting. ‘Is that it?’ I said, rather blankly. I didn’t know what I’d expected to happen, but it was more than this sudden dismissal.
‘That’s it. Are we on for next weekend?’
‘Barring accidents,’ I said flippantly. ‘Venice again?’
‘If that’s what you’d like.’
‘I’d like it very much. And you mustn’t waste the tickets. Where are we staying?’
‘The Danieli.’
‘On your own money? You can’t chalk it up to someone’s expenses?’
‘You probably could. I don’t have your creative approach to accounting. I always meant to ask you, where did you learn, or was it native wit?’
‘Mostly native wit. Helped along by an early boyfriend, a BBC cameraman.’
‘That explains it . . . Come on, Alex, home. You’re tired.’
I was. Most unusually, I was, probably because now he hadn’t told me anything really awful I allowed myself to feel it. I’d tensed up to cope with whatever he was going to hit me with. And it hadn’t been so bad. I didn’t really think any harm would come to him from the IRA, perhaps because you don’t believe those things unless they actually happen. It was an idea, not a reality, like the bombs you knew they planted round London but they didn’t stop you living there and you didn’t actually give them more than a momentary tut-tut unless they blew up in your face. There was too much else to do, and think about, just living.
In At The Deep End Page 17
