‘Haven’t you got a boyfriend?’
‘No. I don’t really want one. I know I shut myself off from people too much but I think they always betray you in the end.’
‘That’s awfully cynical.’
‘I hate the way men can finish one relationship and pick up where they left off with the next one. They’re like ruminants, wandering from one field of grass to the next, hardly lifting their heads up from grazing to notice what’s going on around them.’
‘Women are like that too, sometimes. You just haven’t found the right man. That’s why I think so much of Roy. He isn’t like that.’
‘Yes, you could be right. There is someone who cares about me. He sent me some lip gloss. I might give him a call when we get to the coast, after I’ve wrapped up this missing person enquiry.’
‘As soon as I met him I thought Roy and I would always be together. It was quite easy to see the old man in him, to see how we’d grow old together, nipping the edges of a tidy lawn in the summer, building a fire in the living room grate in the winter. I thought I was investing in a certainty.’ Sheila, talking of Roy as if he were the South Sea Bubble, slips a metal colander on her head. The conical shape of the Philippe Starck design fits her quite snugly.
‘That’s an expensive-looking colander, Sheila.’
‘If I used a cheap one with the traditional round shape it would slip about every time I move my head, besides looking like a World War One tin helmet.’
‘Oof. You wouldn’t want that.’ Alison is very cheerful, looking forward to the drive.
Sheila is also looking forward to reaching the coast. She has packed a large, folded piece of paper with a grid pencilled on to it. The contours of Roy’s face are plotted on the grid with Xs.
A young police constable arrives at Mrs Latimer’s house. If Mrs Latimer didn’t have her office at home, she would rarely have to open the door or answer the telephone herself. If she worked for a large organisation there would be a receptionist or a personal secretary to do it for her. Her secretary is a local woman from the village and she only works in the mornings. It is already lunch time and Mrs Latimer is eating a goat’s cheese tartlet with new potato salad. The secretary has gone home to feed her children and all the silly boys who work for Mrs Latimer are taking a break somewhere, eating their sandwiches in the fields or smoking dope. Mrs Latimer goes to the door, still carrying her fork somewhat absent-mindedly. She will remember the fork when she looks back on this moment.
‘I wonder if you can help me,’ the constable begins. ‘A young man has been involved in an accident. I’m trying to trace his next of kin.’
‘Oh, my God. Not Joey? Is it Joey?’
‘No. The young man’s name is Jeremy.’
‘Oh, then you’re looking for Sylvia?’
‘I’m sorry, madam. I didn’t mean to worry you. Is she here?’
‘No.’
‘We’ll try her at her other address, in Kent. Is she there, do you think?’
‘Let me just,’ Mrs Latimer grabs for the constable’s notebook. ‘Let me just have a look. Yes, yes, down by the coast. Is Jeremy all right?’
‘I really need to inform the next of kin, Madam, before I can tell you that.’
‘Oh my God, is he dead then?’ Mrs Latimer shuts the door, gesturing with the fork so that the constable will leave before she forgets Sylvia’s address. She rushes to the message pad by the telephone in the hallway and writes down Sylvia’s address, then she sits in the chair by the phone and she puts her face in her hands and she cries. Emotion overtakes her.
She tries to deal with the awful, horrible fear that she felt even for a few seconds when she thought she had lost Joey; with relief that he is alive; with the longed-for possibility of finding and reuniting with Sylvia. The contrasting emotions following so quickly on the richness of the goat’s cheese make her feel nauseous. She remains in the shadows in the hallway for a little while, recovering.
Venetia goes to sit at the antique cherrywood desk that once belonged to her mother-in-law. Inside the top drawer there lies the one remaining secret that Venetia Latimer felt she must share with Sylvia, years ago, when she still lived here. She had told all her business secrets. She had explained her cash flow projections and her profit margins, she had shown her the suitcase of money she kept in the safe for emergencies. She had led Sylvia by the neck into the ring, so she could interpret the performance from a dog’s perspective. She helped Sylvia understand the best way to care for the elephant she had given her. Venetia had given her a lot but she wanted to give more. She runs over the incident in her mind. Again.
‘We must not just share the good times,’ Venetia tells Sylvia. The moment has come to show Sylvia her terrible burden and ask her to share it. She takes Sylvia into the office. The expensive furniture throws shadows in the room; the writing bureau, every occasional table and every chair an emblem of the money that flowed into the house when Venetia’s trust fund was united with Stephen’s.
Black and white photographs in silver frames document some of Venetia’s recent achievements. She shakes hands heartily with Prince Charles at Highgrove House during a high point in her career in the mid-eighties. She caresses her favourite Dalmatian on a sentimental afternoon in the early nineties. A space opposite the doorway has been reserved for future triumphs and will one day be occupied by the photographic portrait of her, two feet wide and three feet high, taken to illustrate Jane Memory’s article on successful business women.
Venetia takes Mrs Fitzgerald’s report on cruelty to animals and lays it in Sylvia’s hands. ‘This is what we are up against.’ Sylvia looks at Venetia in that slow way of hers, takes the report and reads it there in the office, sitting on a reupholstered chair reserved for visitors, her foot wound around one of the Queen Anne legs.
Venetia said ‘we’ because she meant to show Sylvia that they were equals at last and that she had shared everything with her, there was nothing else left to give. She wanted Sylvia to know that she loved her and to love her back. Those were to be the last words she ever said to Sylvia. She had heard voices raised in anger when Jeremy came to visit unexpectedly late that night but she hadn’t interfered, thinking Sylvia was shrugging off her old life. By the next morning Sylvia was gone.
In Paradise, Sylvia is thinking of Jeremy, who she loves. She does not yet know he is dead. Two years ago, Venetia Latimer gave Sylvia a report to read entitled ‘Unkindness Kills’ and then smack, Sylvia went and told Jeremy about it. She had been dealt a blow by Venetia and she dealt it straight back at Jeremy. It was almost a reflex action, as if she had been given a slap on the face in a 1950s romantic comedy. Sylvia has had plenty of time to think about how she should have handled telling Jeremy that the circus was wrong. She thinks now that she should have let him be.
Sylvia has given instructions in her will that everything she has should be left to Jeremy when she dies. However, she has been trying to come up with a plan before then that will restore to Jeremy whatever identity he lost when he left the circus to please her, since she thinks she might last at least another sixty years.
When the news comes about Jeremy, Sylvia will feel so guilty that she has never made amends that she will think she is going to die of a broken heart. In a way she will be right, although it will be a very slow death, more like dying from smoking than from being hit by a train.
Chapter Forty ~ Regeneration
The Brixton Regeneration Committee has been given £2 million by the Government to spend on improving Brixton. They have spent half a million on a new shopping centre above the Tube station and they are at a loss as to how to spend the rest. An advertisement has been placed in the South London Advertiser, inviting suggestions for the name of a local person to be immortalized by a thirty foot statue, which will be sculpted in bronze by a local artist and placed in the small garden close to St Matthew’s Church, replacing the ineffectual fountain that currently stands there.
The church stands in the middle of the one
-way system that runs up Effra Road and down Brixton Hill, a grand yellow-bricked building with Roman pillars at its entrance and retail outlets on its premises, accessible from the garden. The Regeneration Committee specifies that the person should have made ‘a significant impact on local and national events and should continue to reside in the area.’ The edifying sight of the statue will be enjoyed by members of every strata of Brixton society, including diners heading for the vegetarian restaurant in the basement of the church; clubbers coming out of The Fridge opposite or chilling out during Mass, the regular disco held on the upper floors of the church; the happy-clappy church-goers and the local vagrants gathering in the garden to drink Tennants Extra and mutter inarticulate abuse.
Miss Lester is reading the local press coverage of the search for a suitable candidate for the statue. She finishes the paper and then looks back to the centre pages to check the television listings. There is nothing she wants to watch. ‘Well, what shall I do now?’ she asks herself. Miss Lester is lonely, although she doesn’t really know it. She has no experience of not being lonely to compare with her situation. Being lonely is when you sit at home at 8.30 pm on a Tuesday evening and say ‘What shall I do now?’ and there is no one to answer you.
Miss Lester takes a sheet of cream vellum paper and an ink pen and starts to compose a letter. She likes to keep herself busy. She doesn’t have a wide circle of friends as she doesn’t have the knack of getting on with people. The last time she can remember really laughing with someone and feeling close to them was with her mother, many years ago, before she died. Miss Lester has been terribly grateful for the attention paid to her by Mrs Fitzgerald. She has often tried to thank her for this but Mrs Fitzgerald won’t hear of it. ‘Violet, it is not out of the ordinary for someone to be kind.’
Miss Lester blows on the page to make sure the ink is dry. She used blotting paper when she was at school. Some thrill-seekers among the girls would steal it and put sheets of it in their shoes, saying it drew the blood from their heads to their feet and made them faint. Miss Lester wouldn’t even know if shops still stock it now.
She seals the envelope and addresses it to the Brixton Regeneration Committee with a real sense of a job well done. If all goes according to plan, Mrs Fitzgerald will at last be accorded the recognition properly due to her. Miss Lester will see to it that the statue shines as brightly through the years as it does at its inception, for as long as she has the strength to wield a duster and a tin of Brasso.
Chapter Forty-One ~ The Race
There is a race taking place among the July holiday traffic on the road to Sylvia’s house between three vehicles whose drivers are unaware they are competitors.
Mrs Latimer is driving hell-for-leather down to Sylvia’s address in an air-conditioned white van, hell-bent on finding Sylvia. Her two favourite Dalmatians are travelling in comfort in the back of the van, invisible behind tinted windows. Venetia Latimer would like to drive at such a devilish speed that she burns up the motorway but her dogs get travel sick over sixty-five miles per hour and she cares too much for them to do it. Mrs Latimer grips the steering wheel, as menacing in her very best clothes as Cruella De Ville, although with ninety-nine Dalmatians too few to fit the role.
Jane Memory, in a red sports car, is struggling against a yeast infection that is exacerbated by sitting for long periods in snug-fitting leather trousers. The Brazilian wax is starting to grow back and is causing some discomfort. Harvey, in the passenger seat, is cradling the borrowed video camera in his lap and passing the journey by filming Jane. She gives vent to her feelings of extreme vexation by making lewd gestures to articulated lorry drivers. She suspects they are all sexist pigs but many are family men singing along to sad country music to pass the journey.
Alison and Sheila, Phoebe and Boy are bowling along in the middle lane of the motorway. They made an early start and this on top of the speed of their car has pulled them nearly an hour ahead of their rivals, albeit unwittingly. They feel they are making good time on the journey so when Alison sees the sign for a service station, she and Sheila agree to stop and give themselves and the baby a break from the carbon monoxide building up in the car, sucked in through the radiator from the traffic fumes and recycled through the air conditioning. Sheila and Alison drink cappuccinos and Phoebe drinks uncarbonated spring water. Alison, beaming and cheerful because she received a £2 coin in her change at the till, takes the opportunity to explain her £2 coin rule to Sheila.
‘Have you noticed, as soon as you get a £2 coin – which is something that is still unusual enough to be regarded as lucky – that you have to part with it again, usually in the very next transaction, usually at the local shop?’ Sheila searches her own purse for the coins, in case the loss of the £2 coin at the next transaction should exert a profound change on Alison’s mood, but in reverse. At an appropriate point during the rest of journey Sheila will endeavour to find out if it counts it as good luck if you pass someone a £2 coin from the front passenger seat of a car or whether this is a rule that only holds true on retail premises.
All three use the facilities before they set off again. In motorway service stations a disproportionately high number of women who use the toilets evidently fear the transfer of venereal disease through contact with the seats. They hover unsteadily with bent knees and they wet all over the seat. Either that, or they deliberately spray their piss like he-cats because they have been arguing with their family during the car journey and they need to re-exert their authority. Whatever the cause, the droplets of urine are almost invisible on the white toilet seats and catch the unwary, wetting their thighs and branding them with a gutter smell for the rest of their journey.
Alison and Sheila, crowded together into the disabled toilet, stand shoulder to shoulder because of the lack of space. They are staring at Phoebe sitting on a white plastic potty.
‘I think I ought to have her potty-trained by now. My mother said I was out of nappies at fourteen months old.’ Alison is running the tap at the low sink, bending to run her fingers under the water to make a splashing sound by way of encouragement. Phoebe stares blankly back.
‘My mother said I could speak perfectly formed sentences at six months.’ Sheila hands a dry nappy to Alison from the bag. ‘If everyone tried to match their children’s’ milestones to their mothers’ proud boasts we’d be in a sorry way.’ Alison dries her hands on her trousers before fixing Phoebe up.
‘You never had children, did you, Sheila?’
‘No. I had Roy.’
‘What will you do, Sheila, if we don’t find Roy?’
‘I always liked the fact that you never asked me that.’
‘I don’t usually ask questions unless I already know the answer.’
‘I don’t love him any less just because the search becomes more difficult. I am less likely to give up now than at any time in the three months I’ve been looking for him. With each obstacle, it just reminds me how much I love him and it shows me the lengths I’ll go to so that I will find him.’
‘I know what you mean because taking care of Phoebe has completely changed my life. It’s made everything really quite difficult. When I got rid of my husband I swore that I would spend the rest of my life being wild and free. Now I hardly go out. Even getting to work is hard because I have to find someone to look after the baby. I used to think that the kind of person I am is made up of the things that I do. I don’t do any of the same things any more but obviously I’m still the same person. I became really introspective – I think it was a kind of depression - while I tried to work out what kind of person I am, if I’m not defined any more by the kind of night clubs that I go to. And through it all, I loved Phoebe more and more, because I realize what I’m prepared to give up for her – even my own sense of identity, however misplaced it was.’
‘When you fall in love – and women do fall in love with their children - it is not with someone who gives you everything. It is with someone who lets you give them everything.’
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br /> Jane and Harvey are now about seven minutes’ travelling time behind Sheila and Alison. Jane needs to take a rest from driving and from the trouser discomfort. She pulls into the service station, parking two rows away from Alison. Jane buys some wine gums while Harvey explores the self-help section of the book store, then she and Harvey play for twenty-five minutes on the pinball machines in the amusement arcade. They don’t have a lot to say to each other, since they saw Jeremy fall from Big Ben.
Mrs Latimer pulls into the service station to make a stop to check up on the dogs and refresh their water bowls. Sucking on an extra strong mint as she watches the Dalmatians bound about in a wooded area near the petrol pumps and squat to pee on the grass, Mrs Latimer is unaware that she is observed by hundreds of eyes peering from behind the scrubby bushes from among the long grasses. The hundreds of eyes belong to the whiskery faces of some of the mink, from the original six thousand released by activists, that have made it to the south east from the south west of England. From time to time, between fighting each other, the mink run onto the motorway, a minor hazard to the drivers who squash them beneath their wheels without realising they have run over a living thing.
When Sheila and Alison have their first sight of the sea from the road they call each other’s attention to it and drive very fast to the nearest car park, from where they run all the way to the beach to stretch their legs.
Phoebe sits on a towel in a sundress and sun hat with Factor 20 sun cream on her face, her forearms and her hands. She bangs a pink spade against a green bucket. ‘This,’ she says. She sips Evian water occasionally from a beaker fitted with a spout, dribbling it down her cardigan from where it slowly evaporates and joins the clouds forming over the sea, drifting back towards France where rain filtered by the mountains will be collected, treated and bottled before being sold back to Alison and other mothers. ‘If I could find a way of labelling the water you spill maybe I could claim a discount next time it comes my way,’ says Alison to Phoebe, sliding a finger into the baby’s nappy where the elastic meets her thigh to feel whether it needs changing.
Six Pack of Sleuths: Comedy Mysteries Page 78
