What Men Say

by Joan Smith

  “Christopher Caesar,” said the erstwhile wedding guest, holding out his hand. “I don’t think we were introduced.”

  “Loretta Lawson.” He had a lean, serious face, with high cheekbones and dark hair parted in the middle—good-looking in a very un-English way. Loretta would not have been surprised to discover that he worked out at a gym and drank only mineral water.

  “Bridget’s talked about you,” he was saying. “You teach English, right?”

  “Yes, but not at Oxford. And only part-time.” She hesitated, her cheeks growing warm. “The rest of the time I write books.” She felt uncomfortable talking about her writing, especially with strangers, so she added quickly: “I’m a lecturer at London University, one of the newer colleges. I have an office near the Post Office Tower, if you know where that is.”

  “How’d you know Bridget?”

  “Oh—” Loretta and Bridget had been in the same women’s group around the time Loretta left her husband, a journalist called John Tracey. She was not normally reticent on the subject, but it occurred to her that she had no idea whether Sam knew about this bit of his wife’s past, or how he would feel about it. “We’ve known each other for years,” she said vaguely, “it must be at least ten. What about you? I assume you’re a friend of Sam’s?”

  “We work for the same company,” he said, and began to talk about a joint project between CES—Loretta had never quite got over her astonishment that the initials stood for Computo Ergo Sum pic—and the university engineering department.

  She nodded politely from time to time, understanding enough about computers to work her own word processor and nothing more. Bridget, usually as technologically illiterate as Loretta, had developed a baffling interest in the subject in December, suddenly talking knowledgeably about macros, megabytes and even logic bombs; then she introduced Loretta to Sam, and all was explained. Christopher Caesar’s account of ways to use computers to simulate aircraft wear and tear, instead of destroying expensive engines, left Loretta terminally bored and she looked down, hiding a smile at this silent pun, then realized he had stopped speaking.

  “Would you like a hamburger?” she asked quickly. “Everyone’s allowed two, though there hasn’t exactly been a rush . . . Shit!” The flat pink circles which had been sitting harmlessly on the grill last time she looked were now reduced to black, misshapen nuggets. An acrid smell hovered about them, a pungent combination of singed meat and fat-spattered charcoal.

  “You know how to turn that thing down?”

  “I suppose you just . . .” Loretta bent and fiddled with various knobs at the back of the barbecue. “This looks like the gas supply . . . yes, I’ve got it.”

  “Why don’t I take over for a while?” He picked up the fish slice and used it to lift the charred hamburgers onto a plate. “You look like you need a break.”

  Loretta stared at him for a moment, then seized her bag and slid out from behind the table before he could change his mind.

  “Whoa—just missed your dress.”

  She turned and saw that she had almost collided with Stephen Kaplan, who was holding out a plastic cup.

  “Stephen—thanks.” Flustered, she took the cup and sniffed the reddish-gold liquid inside. “What is this?”

  “Some sort of fruit juice. Mango, passion fruit and persimmon—one of those unlikely combinations. They’ve run out of mineral water and I didn’t think you’d want tap.”

  “Really?” Loretta was surprised by this admission of the low quality of the local tap water. It was often cloudy and there had been several incidents of contamination since privatization, but she would not have expected Stephen to acknowledge either problem. “I thought you were all for privatization.”

  “I am, but it’s early days yet. You can’t wipe out years of socialist neglect overnight.” He seemed on the verge of launching into a speech, then apparently thought better of it. “How’s your book selling?”

  “My book?”

  “A biography, isn’t it? Some authoress.”

  Bridget had once claimed, when challenged by Loretta over her friendship with Stephen, that she liked his dry wit. Loretta had never seen any evidence of it, merely an ill-mannered tendency to mock anything he disagreed with. She reined in her irritation and said crisply: “Edith Wharton.”

  “Of course. Jane’s got some of her books but I can’t say I’ve read them . . . Don’t you think those green covers have become a bit of a cliché? I suppose you’re getting lots of lovely royalties?”

  “Not yet. Though the paperback is doing quite well.” Loretta’s royalty statements so far had been a disappointment, but her literary agent assured her it was only because the system was slow to cough up. Loretta hoped she was right.

  “You’re doing another one, aren’t you? Bridget said something about it, not a biography this time.”

  In the distance Loretta saw Janet Dunne getting to her feet, brushing twigs from a pair of baggy green shorts and sliding her feet into sandals. Stephen only wanted to hear about her new book so he could make silly jokes about it; she flashed him a dismissive smile and began edging away. “Stephen, would you excuse me, there’s someone I have to . . . Thanks for . . .” She held up the cup of exotic fruit juice, moving sideways so she did not see Sam Becker until he slipped a proprietorial hand under her left elbow.

  “Loretta—you having a good time?” He was wearing wire-rimmed sunglasses, Ray-Bans she thought, and his straight fair hair fell boyishly onto his forehead. The first time they met, six or seven months ago and in the depths of winter, this striking combination of blond hair and permanently tanned skin had made her think of the Beach Boys—not the balding, middle-aged men she had recently seen on television, but the carefree, party-loving surfers of the mid-sixties. She had recognized the incongruity of the comparison as soon as she made it, for Sam was in his early thirties, too young to have experienced the Summer of Love, and had no connections with the West Coast.

  He was waiting for her reply. “Yes—lovely party,” she said formally, suppressing her annoyance over the hamburger stall.

  Sam squeezed her arm. “Glad you could make it. It mattered to Bridget, you being here.”

  Loretta bridled, disliking his habit of speaking on Bridget’s behalf. “I haven’t had a chance to exchange two words with her, as a matter of fact.” She thought of their brief meeting that morning, recalled Bridget’s haggard appearance and suddenly felt in need of reassurance. “Sam—she is all right, isn’t she? She looked—I thought she looked worn out.”

  Sam frowned and thrust his hands into the pockets of his chinos. “There’s some kind of a problem with her blood pressure. She has more tests on Tuesday.”

  “What? I had no idea.”

  Sam shrugged. “It was a routine check, she didn’t have a clue anything was wrong. She’s an elderly prima gravida, I guess we should’ve expected—”

  “She’s a what?”

  “Her age,” Sam explained. “She’s kind of on the old side for her first child. They told her to take it easy, I wanted to call off the party but . . . well, I guess she’s still trying to be Superwoman. Maybe you could talk to her? She was in the kitchen just now.”

  Loretta warmed to him. “Of course. Look, I know it’s worrying, but she’s always been healthy . . . I’ll go and find her now.”

  “Thanks, Loretta. John, hi, how’re you doing?”

  He was shaking hands with a latecomer, being introduced to his wife and small daughter; Loretta left them and walked slowly towards the house. One of her colleagues in the English department, a woman of about the same age as Bridget and pregnant with her first child, had spent weeks in hospital the previous summer after high blood pressure was diagnosed. She had eventually given birth to a healthy girl, returning to work so exhausted that Loretta had agreed to take over a couple of her courses. She did not enjoy marking twenty-nine essays on The Prelude, or rereading Trollope, but Judith was grateful and the extra money was handy. Loretta now realized she had pai
d little attention to the details of Judith’s condition, seeing her illness as a practical problem which she happened to have the means to solve. It hardly qualified her as an expert on the complications of pregnancy, though she half remembered someone saying Judith’s baby was terribly under-weight . . .

  A furious barking broke out to her right. Loretta turned and saw a puppyish black Labrador making excited sallies towards the barn, stopping just short of the door and nervously backing away. A child was crying, its voice rising and falling in muffled sobs, but she could not see who was in distress or why.

  “What’s going on?” She appealed to Audrey Summers, who had appeared beside her.

  “I don’t know.” Audrey was tense and alert, standing on tiptoe to see over the heads of the adults milling about in front of the barn. Loretta saw the Labrador’s owner struggling with his dog, staggering backwards as it shook off his grasp and darted between the legs of the crowd. He tried to follow, calling the dog’s name—“Teddy, Teddy”—and for a few seconds his voice drowned out the cries of the invisible child, now reduced to a series of thin, despairing wails.

  Loretta gasped. The crying child was inside the barn—inside with the rusty spikes and unguarded machinery she had seen on her first visit, before the house was done up. Dreadful pictures rushed into her head, horror-film images of severed limbs and spouting arteries. Someone began to cry hysterically, and a man’s voice shouted over and over again for a key.

  “What on earth’s going on?” Bridget touched her lightly on the arm, sounding both puzzled and amused. “Sounds like a riot at the very least.”

  “There’s a child—” Loretta’s throat was dry. “One of the children’s got into the barn, I don’t know how.” Earlier in the afternoon, from her vantage point on the other side of the lawn, she had seen a heavy padlock hanging from the hasp.

  “The window.” Audrey nodded in the direction of the farmyard, where a chair was lying on its back below a small, grimy window in the side of the barn.

  “OK, everybody, stand back.” Sam strode past them, a bunch of keys in his hand. He fumbled for a moment, then lifted the padlock off. The door swung inward at his touch and he took a step forward, then fell back, his hand to his nose.

  Stephen Kaplan demanded: “Christ, Sam, what d’you keep in there?” and the area in front of the barn began to clear as people coughed, gagged and retreated. Two boys emerged from the dark doorway, blinking in the brilliant afternoon light, then took to their heels in opposite directions, the larger of the two swerving round Sam and disappearing round the corner into the farmyard. As he went, Loretta caught a glimpse of a familiar green T-shirt.

  “Charlotte!” A woman in red hurried forward, holding out her arms to a small girl whose pale, tear-stained face was just visible round the door. She scooped her up, struggling with the child’s absurd outfit, a voluminous taffeta creation which was torn in several places and beribboned with cobwebs.

  “Is she hurt?” Audrey started towards the barn, then stopped and turned back to Loretta and Bridget with an expression of recognition and dawning horror. The smell reached them a second later, a sweet, sickening stench which brought bile into Loretta’s throat and doubled Bridget over as though she had been punched in the stomach.

  “It smells funny,” the little girl said suddenly, smoothing down her skirt and not looking at her mother. “It smells funny and the lady won’t get up. She’s gone a funny color and she won’t get up.”

  With impeccable timing the Labrador, who had taken advantage of the confusion to slip inside the barn, chose this moment to trot out with an object in his mouth. He paused, wagging his tail good-naturedly, then hurried past Loretta and Bridget in search of his master.

  “Teddy, what have you—”

  The dog presented his trophy, falling back on his haunches and beating his tail on the ground as he waited for congratulations that did not come. Instead, Bridget, who had taken a couple of steps towards him in order to get a better view, clutched at Loretta’s arm and was promptly sick over a mauve hydrangea.

  2

  “Lawson, That’s An Easy One,” Said The Inspector, writing it at the top of a new page. “That Nigerian lady who just went out, I had to get her to spell it twice. Even the Americans seem to have funny names—they all friends of yours?”

  Loretta shook her head, having recognized the black woman as a postgraduate she had once met leaving Bridget’s house in Woodstock Road. As for Americans, she could think of only two: Sam Becker, who hardly qualified as a funny name, and his friend from the computer company.

  “Christopher Caesar?”

  “Mmm, but that’s not how he spells it, not like Julius. Here it is.” She flipped back a couple of pages. “C-I-S-A-R, with a squiggle over the A but he doesn’t insist.” There was silence for a moment and Loretta’s attention wandered, coming to rest on a garish painting over the stone mantelpiece. It was a female nude in the style of Egon Schiele, not an artist whose work Loretta cared for, and she wondered what it was doing in a room which was otherwise solidly traditional. Not Bridget’s choice, she imagined, but that was true of many objects at Thebes Farm. The deep-red walls of the dining room, the polished oval table at which she and the Inspector were sitting, were a far cry from the comfortable chaos she was used to at Bridget’s old house; there was no place here for her shabby Habitat sofas and rickety gateleg table. Loretta saw that someone had left a clear plastic beaker on a corner of the gleaming mahogany, where a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight lent it a transient elegance. It was the only indication that there had ever been a house-warming party, that Bridget and Sam’s friends had toured the house in twos and threes and filled it with admiring comments.

  “Address?”

  Loretta reluctantly turned her gaze back to the Inspector, whose name she had already forgotten. “Sorry, I’ve no idea.”

  “What?”

  She flushed as she realized her mistake. “I thought you meant—” She shook her head, fiddling with her hair to hide her confusion. “I’m sorry, I thought you were still talking about Christopher Cae—Cisar.” She stumbled over the name, adjusting the spelling in her head. “Southmoor Road. I live in Southmoor Road.” She gave the number.

  “Is that the canal side?”

  “Yes. You turn right out of Southmoor Place and it’s on the left.”

  “I must’ve gone past the end of your garden a couple of weeks ago. Funny thing, I’ve lived in Oxford for years and I’d never been on the canal before. You ever been to that pub at Thrupp? The Jolly Boatman, is that what it’s called?”

  “There are two,” Loretta said tiredly. “The Jolly Boatman’s the one you come to first, then there’s the Boat.” She had left Bridget lying on her bed, hardly paler than she was when the party began but visibly weakened by the prolonged bout of vomiting which followed the discovery of the body. Audrey Summers had volunteered to stay with her while Loretta was interviewed, and Sam had promised to look in whenever he could escape from the bald man in glasses who appeared to be in charge of the police operation, but Loretta was anxious to return to Bridget’s bedside. She doubted whether shock could bring on a miscarriage in an otherwise healthy woman, any more than catching sight of a hare could produce a child with a harelip, but Bridget’s blood pressure wasn’t normal to start with.

  “Well, I suppose we’d better get on with it.” The Inspector patted her short red hair, sounding almost apologetic, and Loretta realized that the digression about the canal had been intended to make her relax. “This is just preliminary stuff,” the woman went on, chatty and reassuring. “Getting everyone’s name and address and phone number, and where they were when she was found. Any idea who she is?”

  “Me?” Loretta was astounded. “Good God, no. I mean, it never even occurred to me.”

  “You have a look at her?”

  Loretta gave an emphatic shake of her head.

  “Very wise. Wish I could say the same about the rest of them, trampling all over the crime s
cene . . . You’d think they’d have more sense, being dons and all that.” A crisp note of disapproval had entered her voice.

  Loretta said nothing, aware that the antagonism of the police towards students celebrating the end of finals with showers of champagne in the city streets lasted well beyond the end of the summer term and extended to anyone connected to the university, no matter how elderly or respectable.

  “So you were where, when she was found?”

  “I was on my way to the house, looking for Bridget—Dr. Bennett.” Loretta had given up using her own Ph.D. in a city where higher degrees were as common as personal stereos, and Bridget almost never called her-self Dr. Bennett, but it was one way of avoiding the Ms.-Mrs.-Miss tangle. She described the sequence of events as she remembered it, ending with the child’s deceptively innocent announcement: “The next thing I knew she was saying—”

  “This is the little girl, the one in the blue dress? Charlotte Patterson?”

  “Yes. Something like—she won’t get up, the lady won’t get up.”

  “And you thought—what did you think?”

  “I don’t know, because that was when the dog—” Loretta pulled a face. “Bridget started throwing up and I was trying to get her into the house, I was scared . . .” She shrugged, embarrassed, not wanting to admit that for a moment she had half expected a revenant to stumble into their midst. “It was a bit like a horror film,” she added, attempting to defuse the memory, “you know, one of those Coen Brothers things. I do remember someone coming out of the barn and saying there’s a body, so then I . . .”