by J M Gregson
But the voice was gone, as silently and anonymously as it had arrived. When Robert Beckford finally brought himself to turn, the chapel was as deserted as it had been when he had tried to pray.
‘It will get better as the months pass.’
‘Time, the great healer, you mean.’ The comers of the widow’s mouth turned down a little, as if to show her contempt for the cliche.
Karen Lynch took a deep breath and pressed on resolutely. ‘I suppose I do, yes. The pain grows a little less sharp with each passing day, Barbara.’ It was the first time she had used the bereaved woman’s forename. ‘I don’t mean that it will ever go away completely. The sense of loss will remain with you as long as you live, whatever you do with the rest of your life. That’s natural and as it should be. But the raw pain, the feeling that life is completely pointless, will gradually disappear.’
‘Lost many husbands yourself, have you?’ The tear-swollen eyes beneath the grey hair looked directly at her with this barb.
‘Not yet. I’ve been lucky. But I’ve lost other people who were close to me. We all have.’
‘Of course we have. I’m sorry, Karen.’ The older woman took the plunge and called her by her first name; she had always been Mrs Lynch, the vicar’s wife, before, and thus always in her husband’s shadow. In doing this, Barbara Lawrence acknowledged that she welcomed the use of her own forename by the woman who had come to comfort her.
How subtle are the unwritten rules of English society, how baffling any foreigner would find the social interplay in this odd race!
‘I’ll get us a cup of tea, shall I?’ said Karen, and bustled away into the kitchen, her crippled leg giving her that irregular dot-and-carry-one action but scarcely slowing her movement.
Barbara would rather have made the tea herself, but she let Karen do it, sensing that her visitor would be more at ease if she was allowed some physical action. The seventy-year-old, stricken with grief, thinking of the needs of the strong young woman who had come here to comfort her, Barbara thought ruefully.
‘There’s some shortbread in the cupboard near the kettle,’ she called.
They were more at ease with each other when Karen came back, carrying the tray before her as carefully as a dutiful child.
Barbara said without thinking, ‘Have you always been a cripple, dear?’ and then wondered immediately if she had been incredibly rude.
Karen smiled. ‘That’s what everyone called it when I was a child. By the time I was twenty, it had become ‘handicapped’. Now that I’m thirty-four, I’m ‘disabled’ and there are all kinds of provisions for us. Except that I don’t use them, because I never really think of myself as either handicapped or disabled. I grew up with a gammy leg, you see. Learned to cope when I was a kid. Learned that the best way of dealing with it was to pretend that it didn’t exist, as far as possible.’
‘I’m sorry. It’s personal. I shouldn’t have asked you that.’
‘Your grief’s personal too, isn’t it? And yet some interfering busybody comes into your house and tries to tell you how to run your life!’
‘I’m glad you’re here. Glad to find someone like you trying to help me.’ Barbara Lawrence found to her surprise that she meant every word of that.
Karen grinned at her. ‘Even someone with a gammy leg? I was bom with my right foot turned sharply inwards and my right leg a bit crooked. Nowadays I think they’d operate in infancy, but they weren’t as clever or as confident in those days. But when you’ve never known life to be any different, you don’t even think about it. I’m told that people who’ve been blind from birth cope with that much more easily than people who have had full sight and lost it.’ She firmly thrust aside her memories of being the last one selected when they were picking teams for childhood games, of maintaining a glassy smile while others were taken on to the dance floor at teenage discos.
Barbara was pleased to find her visitor talking so freely, delighted that they had found a subject other than her own suffering and her grief for Brian. She said abruptly, her words surprising herself as much as her listener, ‘I’m going to mourn him, you know. I’m not ashamed of my grief!’
‘Nor should you be!’ Karen’s response was instant and vigorous. ‘Brian was a good man. He deserves your grief. And so do you. It’s a necessary process. Not always pleasant, but something we have to go through. It can be a dark tunnel sometimes - usually at around four o’clock in the morning - but eventually you’ll see the light at the other end.’
‘So long as it isn’t the front light of a bloody great train coming to splatter me!’ said Barbara, and found herself enjoying the first genuine laugh she had allowed herself since the death two weeks ago.
‘Have you been out much yet?’
‘Not at all. Well, just to the comer shop for bread and milk.’
‘You must venture out, you know, now that the funeral’s over.’
‘I do know that, yes. I’m going to go to church on Sunday. Perhaps I’ll get back to the WI next week.’
‘You’ll probably find that people seem to be avoiding you at first. You should be prepared for that. They don’t mean to be unfriendly - they just don’t know what to say. Death is still a bit of a taboo subject, you know. Then, at a later stage, you’ll find that people never mention Brian, for fear of upsetting you.’
‘I’ve heard that before, now that you mention it. I’ve probably done it myself, with other people. Well, I’ll be happy enough not to talk about Brian at present. I’d be frightened of breaking down myself, you see.’ And immediately Barbara did just that. She had to take a determined bite at the shortbread she had hitherto neglected, attempting to disguise her emotion.
‘No one will expect you to be the life and soul of the party, but people will be feeling for you. You should remember that they’re being sympathetic, even though they might not know quite how to show it.’ Karen wondered why she seemed to be able to rustle up no more than the routine cliches of consolation. Perhaps they had become cliches because they were undoubtedly true.
Barbara Lawrence didn’t seem to mind. She declared herself much cheered by the end of the visit and seemed delighted when Karen offered to call again in a week. After she had gone, Barbara reflected on how much easier it was to talk to the vicar’s wife than to the vicar himself. Peter Lynch was never unkind; he was popular in the parish and had increased church attendances. By all accounts, he was good with the young people, and he certainly preached a good sermon in the modem, ecumenical way. But he didn’t quite have the common touch. Mrs Lynch was far better at appreciating just how you felt and just what you were going through.
As she nursed the old Fiesta back towards the vicarage, Karen Lynch was nothing like so confident of her empathy skills. She thought her visit had gone fairly well, after an unpromising start. She could certainly see the value of such visits. People like Barbara Lawrence could easily descend into isolation and despair without the tactful support of the church and its congregation.
Tactful: that was a word Karen had never had to consider until she had met Peter and taken up vicarage life. Sometimes the unquestioning rectitude of the people and the homes she visited could seem almost claustrophobic, because of that very different life she had led in the years before Peter. He knew about it, of course. She didn’t have secrets from Peter. But even Peter didn’t know the worst of it, the sordid details she herself tried unsuccessfully to forget.
It was clearer than ever to her that no one else here should know about her past.
‘Anything of interest in the criminal world?’
Anne Jackson knew that Chris Rushton wouldn’t tell her if there was, that the details of any juicy case would remain confidential until it came to court. He was a stickler for playing things by the book. But that was one of the things she found unexpectedly likeable in Detective Inspector Rushton. In a world where people cheated routinely and integrity was almost a dirty word, you could rely on Chris to be absolutely honest and to operate within the rules. Alm
ost stuffily honest at times, but that was part of the package. And Anne had liked the package so much that she had recently become engaged to Chris.
Sure enough, he now said a little starchily, ‘There’s nothing of great interest at the station at the moment. A few routine domestic beatings. Though I’m not sure one should ever describe them as “routine”.’ He looked at her anxiously, as if fearing her reaction. Chris was a handsome, dark-haired man of thirty-two, whose erectness made him look a little taller than he was. Like many a policeman of his age and rank, he was divorced. He had got over the loss of his wife, but not that of his five-year-old daughter, Kirstie, to whom he had access only every other weekend.
At work, he was supremely confident of his abilities, though he recognized that his chief, Chief Superintendent John Lambert, was a subtler judge of people and a better interviewer than he was. Lambert, despite his massive local reputation, was in Chris’s view something of a dinosaur. He was content to leave DI Rushton in charge of the coordination of serious crime investigations in the CID section at the station. Lambert preferred to be out and about, assessing suspects for himself, sniffing out the key elements in any puzzle. A chief superintendent who did not direct from behind a desk was almost unique in the modem police service, but Lambert was indulged because of his veteran status and his impressive results. His working methods suited Chris Rushton, who was excited by the possibilities of modem technology and enjoyed the challenge of bringing together and cross-referencing the plethora of information brought in by the big teams in complex cases.
In his private life, Chris was much less assertive. His divorce had knocked his confidence and accentuated his natural diffidence. He had scarcely been able to believe that Anne Jackson, a young primary school teacher, whom he had met in the course of a murder investigation, found him attractive. She was almost ten years younger than him and now they were engaged; there were mornings when Chris still had to pinch himself to believe that it was true.
Anne stretched herself luxuriously on his sofa, deciding not to pursue the latest gloomy prognostications for the economy in The Times. ‘You wouldn’t believe how exhausting thirty eight-year-old children can be over a day.’
‘I would. I know how wrung out one innocent five-year- old can leave me at the weekend. I don’t know how you manage it.’ Chris still marvelled at the qualities of his amazing new fiancee. Correspondingly, one of the things which pleased Anne was that through all the awful things he saw in his working life and through the vicissitudes of marriage and divorce, her man had retained a certain pleasing naivety. She was slightly surprised to find that she thought of him now as ‘her man’.
‘There are compensations. You see an amazing amount of development in an eight-year-old, over a year. It’s good to feel you’ve contributed something positive to that process.’ He stirred the rice as it came to the boil in the pan, set the timer on the cooker for eleven minutes. ‘Thanks for picking up the food on your way here.’ He could still be cautiously polite at times, carefully thanking her for what others would just have accepted as part of being a couple.
‘I saw that man in the supermarket, the one you were watching in the pub last week.’
‘Which one was that?’
‘The one you said was a drug dealer.’
‘The one I said we suspected,’ he corrected her pedantically. Facts were important to him. It was one of the things on which he and John Lambert agreed. His chief could be a positive Gradgrind about facts, insisting all the time on information before speculation. ‘It’s drug squad business really, but they’re anxious to trap the big boys, not the small fry.’ Then he added apologetically, ‘I wasn’t really watching him, you know. He just happened to be in the pub at the same time as us.’
‘So you studied his every move, as long as he was there.’ She was laughing at him, her bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief, the comers of her wide mouth crinkling as they resisted open amusement. ‘If you hadn’t given him so much attention last week, I might not have noticed him today.’
‘Proper little detective, aren’t you, Anne Jackson?’ He left the stove and the small, neat kitchen of his flat and walked over to stand behind her. He ran his fingers though her hair, savouring the look of her, the scent of her, the feel of her.
She wriggled a little, then reached up and took his hand. ‘He was behaving a little oddly, I thought.’
‘He might well have been. Darren Chivers was a drug user himself. Still is, for all I know.’ A pause, then came the question he had not meant to ask. ‘How do you mean, oddly?’
‘Well, I wasn’t really watching him, but he seemed to be wandering up and down the aisles without buying very much. And he was still in the car park when I came out, reading a copy of the Citizen, or pretending to. I thought perhaps he was waiting for someone.’
‘You seem to have noticed quite a lot, for someone who wasn’t really watching him.’ He enjoyed teasing her; it was a pleasure which had been denied to him in the last few years. Then suddenly, she stood up and turned to face him, and they were in each other’s arms.
Four
The view was certainly spectacular. From the restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower on a June evening, you could see the whole of London and much more. It was, Mark Rogers reminded himself, one of the definite advantages of being a British Telecom executive. For security reasons in a vicious modern world, this supreme view of the capital and its environs was now confined entirely to those attending BT corporate shindigs.
Rogers was on official duty here, entertaining important customers. It wasn’t arduous and his role meant that the excellent food, as well as the visual delights, were entirely free. For an ambitious thirty-seven-year-old, who had risen quickly in the firm and planned to go further, evenings like this were tangible recognition of his progress and his status. He smiled willingly at an observation from the lady on his left, checked surreptitiously on the perfection of the knot in his tie, and transferred his attention to the supermarket chief on his right. You had to direct your conversational efforts at the people immediately beside you and the man or woman immediately opposite you. You could join in any more general exchanges if they stemmed from someone else, but you should not initiate them yourself. There was no official instruction to that effect. It was merely a common-sense procedure which Mark Rogers had devised for himself and tested satisfactorily on previous occasions. Common sense was a surprisingly effective aid in climbing the promotional ladder. If you used it shrewdly, it could even give you a reputation for insight and intelligence.
It really was a magnificent view. Mark agreed heartily with the supermarket director on that, then pointed out the splendid isolation of this tower, contrasting the view with the skyscraper- dominated skyline of New York. Though there was now inevitably a proliferation of high-rise building in London, there were no other very tall buildings to obstruct the immediate view in this area of the city. Mark managed to imply that it was the foresight and architectural genius of British Telecom which had secured this advantage over viewpoints in that other metropolis across the pond.
The circular restaurant, entirely surrounded by windows at eye level, rotated every twenty-two minutes, so that any building of interest missed on a first viewing could be seen again as it returned to the vision of these fortunate eyes. Mark pointed out the Senate House of London University, which had once dominated the landscape, but now looked almost insignificant below them. It turned out that the supermarket mogul had attended that august institution, whereas twenty years later Mark had read Business Studies at Reading. Neither of them had enjoyed what they agreed were the dubious joys of a public school. And so one of those little bonds was established between them which help to grease the wheels on such evenings.
Mark pointed out to the friendly lady on his left that the first lights were coming on now in the building known as the Erotic Gherkin and in the towers of Canary Wharf beyond it, proving that the view from here was not only supreme, but constant
ly changing. It was an hour now since people had first entered this room and gasped at the panorama below them. Most of them had walked to the windows, looked down at the vertigo-triggering streets so far below them, and moved hastily to the seats at the tables and the longer views. Mark had stood for a moment studying a minor traffic accident hundreds of feet below, where a van which looked like a Dinky toy was resting against the boot of a Jaguar and tiny matchstick figures were engaged in a noiseless pantomime of argument. Having established that heights were no problem for him, he had turned back to the guests with the understanding, unruffled smile of the experienced host.
The food was good and the wine plentiful. As he wasn’t driving home that night, he did not need to count the units. He drank enough to encourage those around him to indulge themselves, noting surreptitiously how much his immediate neighbours were consuming. He had no plans to exploit the knowledge, but information was never wasted. If there was a teetotaler adjacent to you, you would be a little more careful with your own drinking; if someone was overindulging, you might be able to encourage the occasional useful verbal indiscretion.
No one was overindulging. Perhaps they were as watchful as he was. More likely they just wanted to enjoy the rare opportunity to see such vistas bathed in the soft sunlight of a June evening. The lady he was talking to was the wife of an eminent BT client. No need to be careful here, on the face of it, but wives usually reported back to husbands in the privacy of late-night bedrooms. This wife was a pleasant, intelligent lady in her mid-fifties, with a liking for music and literature; she was looking forward to another freebie at Glyndebourne next month. As the vista to the north-east moved gradually into view, Mark pointed out the white stone and green glass of the new NHS hospital, then the older listed buildings of the London University Medical School, in their distinctive St Andrews cross shape.
‘George Orwell died in Room sixty-five of that building, on January the twenty-first, 1950,’ he told his neighbour.
