But, “How do you know?” Norah would immediately and not unreasonably demand; and herein lay the crux of the whole tantalising, infuriating dilemma.
For Janine had promised—had absolutely promised—not to mention to anyone, and particularly not to the Fields themselves, anything of the long and intimate talk she’d had with that dark, intense young woman with the shining loops of black hair and the flashing angry eyes, who’d called on her without warning, quite out of the blue, at crack of dawn.
Well, early, anyway. Jolly early. Janine was one of those people who sleep so heavily that waking up in the morning is like recovering from being dead; and so the sound of that front door bell, jangling in her ears at least two hours before she would normally have dreamed of stirring, really did have an impact not unlike the trump of doom.
Still barely conscious, incapable of wondering who the untimely caller could be, she shuffled her feet into her old slippers, and somehow managed to make her way down the stairs.
On first opening the door, still corpse-like with sleep, Janine had very nearly simply shut it again, crept back to bed, pulled the blankets over her ears, and hoped that when she woke next it would all turn out to have been a dream.
For the contrast was just too awful. Here she was, in her early morning death-mask, further embellished by curlers, hair net, and her All Night Vitamin Anti-Wrinkle Cream, being confronted by this svelte, elegant young woman in a crisp summer dress, spotless sandals, and every hair in place at this unearthly hour. Well, honestly, people have collapsed and died before now at the sight of apparitions far less unnerving: mumbling monks and things, with their heads under their arms, and who disappear anyway at the first grey glimmer of dawn.
But this one didn’t disappear. The first grey glimmer of dawn must be long past, the air was already golden and shimmering with the just-risen sun, birds were singing. Before Janine had found the strength to close the door in the face of all that early morning poise and exquisite grooming, the word “Field” seemed to float past the vicinity of her slowly-awakening ears. “Miranda Field … I wonder if you can by any chance tell me if there’s a Miss Miranda Field living around here…?”
Faith moves mountains, they say: and Hope lights up our darkness: but surely the greatest of all is Curiosity? In situations so extreme as to be beyond the reach of either Hope or Faith, there you may still find Curiosity, perky as ever, clinging to the very edge of the abyss. Old men on their death beds have roused up from their comas to demand of their doctor what the hell he thinks he’s playing at now? Even condemned criminals on the scaffold have sometimes managed to peer sidelong past their blindfold to say, “But why not an ordinary slip knot?”
Nor is this very surprising, for it is to Curiosity that Homo Sapiens owes nearly everything he has. Curiosity brought him out of the mud, out of the cave, out of the trammels of a life brutish and short, just as it was now bringing Janine out of the terminal phase of her night’s repose, and restoring to her the power of movement and of speech. It was like a shot in the arm. At the words “Miranda Field” the blood began to flow back into her veins, her stiff joints began to stir and flex, and her brain itself started creaking into action under the curlers and the hairnet.
In less than a minute, these impedimenta were no more, and Janine, moribund no longer, was bustling around her kitchen in a bright overall, making coffee for her visitor, and chattering gaily.
If Iris’s intention in coming here this morning had been to pick up some bits of information about Miranda’s background and antecedents, she must by now have been feeling like a latter day Sorcerer’s Apprentice; or, to bring the parable right up to date, like an easy-going research student who, having chosen as his B.Litt. subject a very minor eighteenth century poet (one slim volume and a couple of essays), then discovers that the man has also written eighty full length volumes on the distribution of Church property in England and Wales between 1740 and 1795, with full appendices on the income therefrom derived.
For the data seemed unstoppable. Miranda Field’s pregnancy, her abortion, her kindergarten report, her hamsters, her friendship with the Whittaker girl, her father, her mother, her ne’er-do-well brother who was vaguely supposed to be ill, or something, or maybe it was this rather umpty friend of his who was ill, anyway, no one had set eyes on either of them since they got back from India; and why not?—because neither of them ever got up in the morning, that’s why: and as to getting a job, Hell would freeze over before either of those lads stirred a finger in that direction.
And the parents? This Mr and Mrs Field? Well—between ourselves—between Janine and this total stranger, that is—although Norah Field was such a marvellous person when you got to know her, really marvellous; and although Janine wouldn’t dream of saying one word against such a very close friend—nevertheless, in the interests of being absolutely frank…
The general picture emerged clearly enough. A classic case. Bossy, opinionated mother; loving, ineffectual father, who’d always adored everything about his children except their company. Between Mrs Field’s rigidly permissive principles, and Mr Field’s shameless indulgence of every childish whim that looked like being conducive to a few minutes’ peace and quiet (such as ice cream off the Tinkabel van in the next road)—between the two of them, though Janine hated to say it of such wonderful, wonderful people, they’d spoiled the kids rotten. And so it was no wonder that this, that and the other, from the death of Miranda’s goldfish on her sixth birthday to Sam’s blaring pop music night after night ever since he’d got back from India.
How the conversation moved from all this to the baby-snatching incident, Janine could never afterwards recall. Throughout the interview, she’d had a vague sense of being “used”; but this feeling, which enrages some women so much, had never bothered Janine at all. After all, what one woman calls “being used” another will call “having fun”, and Janine was decidedly among these latter. It seemed to her, when she thought about it at all, that everyone is being “used” all the time, by everyone, from the milkman who’d be out of a job without her late night cup of cocoa and her breakfast cereal, to the greenfly who’d be out of the evolutionary stream altogether if it wasn’t for people like her saving enough soft drink labels to send in for Special Bargain Offer Rose Bushes, flower all summer, glorious blooms, crimson/white/yellow please state second choice.
Lucky greenfly! Lucky milkman! And now, lucky Miss Whatsername, seeking to pick Janine’s brains about something. This sense of her role as universal provider sometimes quite went to Janine’s head, and never more so than now, with this poised and purposeful young woman, obviously well-educated, hanging on her every word.
It’s nice having your every word hung on, your every opinion noted; but as the conversation—or interview, or whatever you liked to call it—continued, Janine became aware that she was beginning to be just a wee bit indiscreet, or at any rate that it might sound like that if anyone happened to be listening.
But what the hell? Nobody was listening; and anyway, what kind of a boring world would it be if everyone was as discreet about everyone else as they all expected everyone else to be about them? Nobody—but absolutely nobody—wants you to be discreet about other people, and since there are far more other people than there are of anyone else—and let the statisticians query this if they dare—the sum of human happiness was well served by Janine’s philosophy.
It was round about the second brewing-up of coffee, with the sun already hot through the kitchen window, that the subject of the stolen baby came up. It was the visitor who introduced the topic, Janine felt sure, or at any rate it was she who manoeuvred Janine into introducing it. The girl was clever, you had to hand her that. Almost before Janine realised it was happening, there the subject was, being tossed to and fro between them in the most natural manner possible, just as if it had come into the conversation by chance.
It hadn’t, though. Janine was herself far too skilled a practitioner at this sort of thing to be deceived.
This, then, was why the young woman was here. This, and this only, was the purpose of her visit: to establish some sort of connection between Miranda Field and the theft of the baby—or, rather, to confirm it, the idea being already clearly established in her mind. All that about having met the Fields on holiday and wanting to look them up again was just so much eyewash.
This girl then, was a policewoman: a plainclothes policewoman on the Snatched Baby case. Yippee! Janine had always longed to be a chief witness in a criminal case. Whenever she read the newspaper reports of criminal trials, she always found herself consumed not with horror, or with pity, or outrage, but with sheer envy of absolutely everyone involved, including the criminal.
And now, here she was, right in the middle of a real live criminal investigation. It was like a dream come true. Then and there she determined to make the most of it, to keep this woman here asking questions for as long as possible, and to give the most intelligent and helpful answers she could, short of actually telling lies. She wanted to make her mark as the most observant and reliable witness they could ever hope to get into the witness box; the judge would commend her clear and precise replies to tricky questions by the Prosecution (or would it be the Defence?) and her picture would be in all the papers. That would make Charlie sit up.
Not that she wished Miranda any harm, of course not; but it wasn’t as if any reticence on Janine’s part was going to save her, not at this stage. Clearly, the police already had her marked down as a suspect, or they’d never have sent this policewoman round making enquiries. Probably, it was an open-and-shut case already.
Because, after all, Miranda had done it. She must have done. It would be just too much coincidence that a baby should get stolen—and around this neighbourhood, too—just when Miranda had had that abortion, and with her hormones all haywire and everything, the way you read about even after normal childbirth. And then that bit about the fair girl with the pram—and as if all this wasn’t enough, just look at her parents! Not that Janine had anything against the Fields, they were her dearest friends, absolute pets, both of them, but all the same, you only had to look at them to know that sooner or later something like this was going to happen. With their heads crammed to the eyebrows with O.K. thoughts, and with their condescending, trendier-than-thou views on absolutely everything, they were just about due for their come-uppance; and this, unmistakably, was it.
She didn’t, of course, reveal all this to her interlocutor in so many words—well, she wasn’t a common sneak, was she?—but she did cooperate very fully over the enquiries—well, you have to, don’t you, when it’s the police?—until, after a while, the distinction between cooperation and being a common sneak became more and more blurred, even in her own mind.
It was the heat, partly. Fiercer and fiercer grew the sun through the kitchen window as the morning advanced. First the melting butter, then the curdling bottle of milk had to be hurried into the fridge the other side of the room, and Iris took advantage of one of these forays to get to her feet and suggest, very tentatively and politely, that it might be cooler “in your lovely garden”?
It wasn’t lovely: not any more. Janine had never realised, until after Charlie’s intemperate departure that Saturday afternoon without even mowing the lawn, just how much there was to do in the damned plot, and to keep on doing. She’d mowed the lawn herself, almost immediately, just to show him; and then she’d mowed it again, twice; but you’d never know it now, it was a bloody jungle, all over again. And the broad beans had contracted foot rot, or leaf blight, or some such disgusting malady; anyway, they’d curled up and died, and so had the spinach seedlings. The lettuce had bolted, the tomatoes wouldn’t ripen, and any time Janine, in a sudden burst of vague plans, embarked on any digging, the stinging nettles got there first, leaping in when her back was turned like a cat into the most comfortable armchair.
So, really, there wasn’t much to show a visitor and Janine only undertook the tour reluctantly, at the girl’s own insistence. Had the guest been anything less than a policewoman, she would have refused point blank, manners or no manners.
Apart from anything else, it was so boring.
“No, those blue things were here when we came, I think,” she’d find herself saying; or, “Well, I wouldn’t know, I suppose they might be weeds…”
It couldn’t have been exactly scintillating for the visitor, either; but then (Janine reflected) the police must expect to be bored some of the time in the execution of their duty. They can’t always be chasing murderers and things, and falling over precipices in burning cars. And anyway, the woman had brought it on herself; she’d asked to be shown round.
Iris was courtesy itself during this tour of inspection, remarking not at all on the neglect and disorder everywhere in evidence, but just chatting pleasantly about the loveliness of the day and the freshness of the air out here in the suburbs. There was only one bad moment; and this was when the visitor—quite without warning—stepped up to the wooden dividing fence and looked over into the next door garden.
It was awful when anyone did this: really quite shaming, because the Fields, despite all their Meetings and Causes and Progressive hoo-ha’s, nevertheless kept their garden immaculate, a showplace, almost. It seemed out of character for such people, Janine thought; and against their principles, too; very un-Have-Not.
Happily, it was looking decidedly less than its best today—no doubt the Fields had plenty of worries on their minds just now—and in addition to this, Janine noted out of the corner of her eye that her companion was not surveying the well-established lawn—such a contrast to Janine’s,—nor the colourful herbaceous borders, but had her eyes fixed on the one and only eyesore in the whole goddam paradise: the compost heap in the far corner under the great copper beech, where the earth was dark and dank from lack of sun, and nothing would grow, not even ferns.
Luckily, Iris did not stay long enough to have to be offered a drink. The gin was getting a bit low, and after that last letter from Charlie’s solicitors, Janine felt a bit uncomfortable about ordering too much more too soon.
She saw Iris off at the front gate, and, as the car moved off down the road, stood there a little longer, scribbling down on a scrap of paper, just for kicks, its registration number and a note of its make and colour.
And so when, later, it was found parked in this same road a little further down, there was no problem at all about identifying it.
CHAPTER XX
THERE WAS STILL quite a bit of the morning left, but Janine found it impossible to settle to anything. The thought of dropping in on Norah still nagged at her intolerably.
She’d promised not to say anything; and a promise is a promise, particularly when made to a policewoman. Breaking your word to such a personage might well turn out to be Contempt of Court, or an Infringement of the Official Secrets Act, or something similarly inscrutable and forbidding. And also, greatly though Janine was looking forward to further happenings next door, as many and as dramatic as possible, she naturally didn’t want any of them to be her fault. After all, Norah was her best friend.
How frustrating it all was! These hoped-for happenings might actually be happening, right now, this very moment, and she not know it! That plainclothes woman might have doubled right back, parked her car at the other end of the road, and even now be interviewing poor Norah Field about her daughter’s whereabouts. A few mumbled words about “Staying with friends in Derbyshire” might have been good enough for a mere lifelong friend like Janine, but they wouldn’t be good enough for the police. “Derbyshire” indeed! Whereabouts in Derbyshire? … They’d soon sort that one out, with their computers and walkie-talkies and everything.
Poor Norah! Perhaps I ought to go in, Janine found herself thinking, just to warn her? Without breaking any promises, just to drop her a teeny, teeny hint…?
Teeny hint after teeny hint raced through Janine’s mind in quick succession, and equally quickly had to be discarded for this or that reason: and a
t last, after biting ragged all of her ten finger nails, she came to her decision. She would just simply call on Norah in a perfectly ordinary way for a perfectly ordinary chat, just as she’d done a million times before. No hints, no leading questions, just a chat, for God’s sake! Why make such a moral issue of it, such a wrestling with her conscience? Just as if the thing she was about to embark on was a journey into the Dark Night of the Soul?
*
Damn! Hell and damnation! Norah’s back door was locked! This meant that she must be out for the whole day, or even away; she didn’t lock up like this just for popping down to the shops. Janine pushed at the door again, hoping that it was maybe just stuck; but no, it was locked all right, and bolted. Standing there, it occurred to Janine that she hadn’t in fact seen anything of her neighbour this last couple of days, not even in and out of the garden this lovely weather.
Clearly, it was the duty of a friend to check that all was well.
Back home, Janine rummaged in her kitchen drawer for Norah’s front door key. She and Norah had long been in possession of each other’s keys as a reciprocal precaution against getting locked out, or some other emergency. Classifying this present situation (perhaps somewhat loosely) as the latter, Janine hurried over with the key, and soon she was standing in the Fields’ front hall looking warily around her.
What she had expected to discover by thus gaining entry to her neighbour’s home, Janine could not have said. She was to explain it, later, as a “feeling in her bones” that something was wrong; but at the time, if the truth must be told, her bones were feeling pretty ordinary. Only her heart was beating rather faster than normal from the small fear lest someone might suddenly pop out of one of the rooms and ask her what she was doing.
With No Crying Page 13
