I have in fact been quite happy reading The English Garden and do not see why the presence of an occupant in the adjacent seat inconveniences his own reading so much. However, I nod meekly, anxious to avoid precipitating Peter into causing a scene.
“Have you ever been to Liverpool before?” he asks in his low-voiced confidential drawl.
“Only to catch the ferry to Dublin. I don’t know the city at all.”
“Hmm,” says Peter. He regards me ironically, as if my not knowing Liverpool constitutes some social faux pas. “Of course, we aren’t really from Liverpool: we’re from Birkenhead. It is quite a different place. That’s where Mummy’s house is still; the house where Jillian and I grew up. I went to the Birkenhead Grammar School for Boys, you know, before Daddy sent me to Charterhouse. I was a very beautiful youth.”
One of the businessmen glances across at him, and Peter rolls his eyes provocatively.
The tannoy crackles into life and the train guard launches into an announcement about carrying tickets at all times when moving about the train and not leaving luggage unattended. Then he adds:
“The buffet is now open. First Class passengers wishing to collect their complimentary refreshments can make their way to Coach D.”
There is a small stampede for the door. The two businessmen get up and join the queue. Peter is glowering at the scene around him.
“How unspeakably vulgar!” he exclaims. “ ‘Complimentary refreshments’, indeed! Have you seen those lunch-boxes, darling?”, he adds, leaning forward and almost whispering. “They are made of cardboard – cardboard! – with plastic cutlery, and they contain the sort of food that common people might serve at a children’s party. And who knows who prepared them! I daresay they come from one of those catering companies that employs illegal immigrants.”
He tosses his head and flounces back against his seat, folding his hands neatly. I understand from this that we are not intending to partake of lunch. I think that this is to be regretted, partly because of the exorbitant cost of the ticket, but mostly because I am famished. However, I know that I will not have the courage to cross Peter.
The businessmen return, jovially noisy, and begin tearing open the plastic-wrapped packages that they take from inside the house-shaped boxes that they have carried back with them. Glancing at the food, I see that Peter has a point. He follows my gaze.
“I’m certain that we shall get something at Mummy’s,” he says consolingly. “Jillian will have filled up the fridge. Do you know, in her day Mummy was a very fine cook. She could make a meal out of anything – and I do mean anything. Daddy, of course, was a very hard man to please.” He appears to be quite satisfied about this, as if being hard to please were a recommendation. He sits in tranquil reverie for a few moments and then says, as if he has been pursuing a train of thought and suddenly feels impelled to burst into speech:
“Of course, she is very old now. It is quite time for her to go. When I am there looking after her, I think to myself, ‘Mummy, you’ve had a good innings, but it isn’t seemly that you keep on lingering here so long.’ I know that Jillian agrees with me, but as you would expect she is either too decorous or too crafty to say so. By the time the old girl takes herself off, we shall probably both be too decrepit to enjoy the proceeds.”
Alarmed by his indiscretion, I look across at the businessmen, but they are deep into their food and a desultory conversation about painting windows.
“Now,” says Peter, “wouldn’t it be a splendid thing if we could effect a little serendipity? I know that it is quite impossible, of course – the timing is out and they belong to such different social classes that they would never consent to mix: but, if you will indulge my fancy for a moment, wouldn’t it be wonderful if your mummy and Mummy could meet? We could then get yours to dispatch the old girl – for a consideration, of course. I hear that she made quite a good job of taking your grandmother out – so much so that one almost feels that she didn’t deserve to get caught.”
Peter shoots me a look of triumph. I know that I appear to be scandalised – I am scandalised – and it is apparent that he is enjoying my discomfort.
“Peter, that is outrageous, and you know it! Tirzah isn’t some kind of random killer for hire. Although I’ve never fully understood her reasons for killing my grandmother, I’m sure that they existed – in her own mind, at least. She isn’t a serial killer. And you know that you don’t really wish your mother dead – you are just trying to shock me!”
Peter half-grins. “Are you quite sure about that?”
“About what? Tirzah not being a serial killer, or wishing your mother dead?”
“I can only quote Lady Bracknell. ‘Both, if necessary’.” He yawns, and looks out of the window. I no longer find it possible to read. The rest of the journey seems interminable, mainly because I am hungry and bored. I am also uneasy. Peter has managed to kindle something which disturbs me deeply, not just because, however much in jest, he is suggesting that we plot a murder, but because what he has said resonates with something just out of reach – something tucked away in the deeper recesses of my mind.
Liverpool strikes me as a dusty, untidy city that indubitably could have taken more care about how it presents itself. However, I only see it from the windows of a taxi, as Peter is keen to get to Birkenhead as soon as he can. Birkenhead is full of confusing streets and cul-de-sacs which look much like each other. There is mile upon mile of these. I wonder why there are so few shops here, until I understand the obtuseness of this observation: of course the no-doubt solid citizens that live here do not need too many shops of their own, with the great mercantile city of Liverpool on their doorstep. Birkenhead in fact represents the ultimate suburb.
Mummy’s house is a substantial late Victorian red-brick dwelling. It falls short of being ugly, but it is not prepossessing. It stands foursquare in a large garden, and is overlooked by other houses just like it. In the gardens of some of these, smaller, modern houses have been built; but Peter’s Mummy’s garden is well-established, with mature trees and shrubs, and smooth lawns. I guess that the whole place is sacrosanct to the memory of her husband, and that time has stood still here for at least thirty years.
I am not entirely correct about this, for when Peter produces a key and lets us in through the front porch to a wide and gloomy red-tiled hall, I see that all of the furniture is utilitarian, and whilst it can hardly be described as ‘modern’ – which might conjure up images of edgy leather, glass and steel pieces that are certainly not of the style chosen here – these furnishings are not old. I doubt whether ‘Daddy’ had ever clapped eyes on them.
“Hello?” Peter calls out in the falsetto voice that he sometimes uses to greet me.
“Is that you, Jillian?” returns a surprisingly firm voice from beyond a door that is standing slightly open to the left of the hall.
“No, darling, it’s me, Peter: I told you I would be coming today. And I’ve brought a friend!” Peter’s voice rises with every word of the final sentence, which he utters with his head bent against the door, cooing into the opening like a pantomime dame playing partly to the inmate, but mostly to the audience.
“Come in, Peter,” says the voice, I think with a hint of sternness. “What are you doing, fiddling about there in the passage?”
Peter turns and beckons to me theatrically over his shoulder, before giving the door a shove. He enters the room at a sprint, so that by the time I have followed him in, he is kissing Mummy on both cheeks and fondling her hand – which I notice is well-embellished with opulent-looking rings.
I stand uncertainly at the edge of the carpet, until Peter suddenly turns round and extends his arm towards me with a flourish. It has the useful effect of allowing Mummy to enter my range of view.
“And this,” says Peter, keeping his arm outstretched like an impresario, “is Hedley. Isn’t he just divine? Tell me truly if you would not like h
im for yourself, darling!”
The figure in the wheelchair brushes away his other hand, which he has placed on her arm.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Peter,” she says. “You can save your airs and graces for someone else.” She peers across at me.
“You are welcome, Mr . . . ?” “Atkins,” I say. “Oh, just call him Hedley,” says Peter at the same time. “Atkins is rather a common name, isn’t it?”
The old lady ignores this remark, and continues to peer at me with great concentration.
“Do take a seat,” she says. “You are a little late for luncheon, but I am sure that there is something for tea. Jillian will have left something. Peter,” she adds, raising her voice, “go into the kitchen and see what Jillian has left that you can eat.”
“Now,” says Mummy, when Peter has disappeared, “come and sit down and talk to me. I should like to understand why you are prepared to tolerate my son under your roof. Is it just masochism on your part, or does he have some kind of hold over you?” She smiles as she says this, her vermilion-lipsticked mouth stretching over long yellow teeth. I am not sure whether she means what she is saying as a joke or not.
“Peter and I have been friends for some time – and I . . . er . . . we’re very close. I thought it would be nice if . . .”
“I do know that he’s a bugger, you know. There is no need to spare my innocence!” She smiles her weird smile again, and leans closer to me.
“Something else with which I am quite au fait is that my son would like to get his hands on my money. In fact, since I refused to buy the lease on his flat, which would have left him homeless if you had not taken pity on him, I believe that he has thought of nothing else. And I am quite convinced that he would stop at nothing. Nothing!” she repeats the word with a high-pitched whinny, in a manner reminiscent of Peter himself. She also waves her hands like Peter does. “What I should like to know is, how far he has taken you into his confidence. Are you part of some kind of plot to swindle me – or worse?”
Again the curious smile. She rests her hands in her lap, which is covered with a pink cellular blanket. Her wrist joints protrude, huge beneath the stick-like arms that poke beyond the three-quarter length sleeves of her blouse. She is very emaciated. I noticed for the first time that she is wearing a blue felt hat on her head, as if she is just about to go out.
“Are you going somewhere?” I ask.
She looks ruffled.
“Of course I am not going anywhere! Where could I go? I see that you are changing the subject, however. Did my son bring you here for a particular reason?”
Peter returns at that moment, bearing a tray which holds a teapot, china cups, and a plateful of tiny coloured cakes.
“I brought him to see you, darling,” says Peter, enunciating each word with care as if he were explaining something quite complicated to a not especially nimble-brained child. “Why would I not bring him to see you? He has invited me to live with him, as you know. I thought you would be interested to meet him, therefore. And besides, he is always nice to talk to.” He puts the tray down carefully on a low table which stands next to the wheelchair.
“I have found that out for myself,” says Mummy unexpectedly. “How long are you staying for?”
“Oh, we must go back today,” says Peter airily. “Hedley has to work, unfortunately, and he needs Sundays for chores – a bore, but there it is. You aren’t here on your own, though, are you darling? Jillian will come later.”
“Does she know that you are here?” asks Mummy, narrowing her eyes at him. “She doesn’t usually buy cakes for me. She says that they are bad for my diabetes.”
“Nonsense,” says Peter smoothly, “a little bit of what you fancy can’t hurt you – especially at your great age.” He has turned his back to me, so I cannot see his face. “And no, she doesn’t know, because I rather hope she’ll pop in before we leave – and she might not if she knows that we are here. I want to talk to her about something.”
He hands his mother a plate with two of the small cakes on it, and pours tea. He clips a little tray to the side of her wheelchair, and places a cup of tea on it for her, before handing one to me. “Help yourself to cakes,” he says. “I expect you’re hungry.”
Mummy exchanges the plate with the cakes on it for the teacup and takes a few sips. She darts little glances at her two cakes, but leaves them where they are. Peter is not eating, but I see him pour a generous nip from his hipflask into his tea. Usually he carries gin around with him, but I guess that on this occasion it is probably whisky.
The room falls silent. Mummy continues to sip her tea. Peter is drinking his appreciatively. I inch forward to the low table and scoop up a handful of the cakes for myself, which I proceed to eat in as restrained a way as possible, given that my breakfast consisted of a single slice of toast at 6 a.m. this morning. It is now almost 3.30 p.m.
Outside, a car engine can be heard purring, before it stops. There is the slam of a car door, followed by a key turning in the front door lock and the rapid click of high heels in the hall.
“Cooee,” shouts a plummy voice. “It’s only me.”
Mummy sits up straighter in her wheelchair. I cannot read her expression: is it apprehensive? Peter’s face is as smooth and bland as a mask.
Jillian enters the room bearing a large bunch of flowers. She is a small immaculately presented woman with sculpted blonde hair. She has the same tailored slender poise that is Peter’s most striking feature. She freezes when she sees Peter, although when he hurries forward to take her face in both hands and kiss it, she returns this with a perfunctory kiss of her own.
“Be careful, Peter, you are squashing the flowers. What brings you here?”
“Charming as ever, Jillian,” says Peter, twirling on his heel slightly as he springs away from her. It could have been a question or an ironical statement. “I thought you’d be pleased to see me,” he adds, daring her with his boot-button eyes. “Especially after your own surprise visit. I’ve brought a friend with me whom I’d like you to meet. This is Hedley.” He looks across at me as he speaks, but there is none of the ceremony that he had conjured up when making the same announcement to Mummy.
Jillian passes the flowers to him, and moves across the carpet to shake my hand.
“Delighted,” she says, her hand slim and cool in my hot sweaty one. “I have heard of you, of course. You must be a very brave man – or a rather reckless one.”
“Nonsense,” says Peter. “I know what you’re up to: you’re about to say something disparaging about me. But Hedley is quite aware of all my foibles, and he loves me just the same.” He nods at me, smiling.
I grin back foolishly. “Just as I said,” says Jillian. “Well, now that you’re here, there are some papers that I need you to look over with me. Mummy’s thinking of staying in the nursing home permanently from now on. It’s not that she doesn’t prefer it here, but these trips home are beginning to take their toll, and she is mindful also of the strain that it puts on you and me. . . .”
“Mostly you,” murmurs Mummy, evidently directing her remark to Jillian. No-one acknowledges it.
I scrutinise Peter’s face. It is shiningly alert: there is not even a pretence of his usual sang-froid. “. . . so I’ve had Belkin draw up the papers to create a trust fund. Mummy is in complete agreement that this is the right thing to do, to protect our inheritance. We really should go through them together in private. I’m sure that Hedley won’t mind entertaining Mummy for an hour or so?”
“Of course not.”
“You see!” says Peter, twirling again. “He is an absolute little treasure!”
Jillian sighs, and is about to turn towards the door when she catches sight of the two cakes resting on Mummy’s invalid tray. Her face freezes.
“Did you give her those?” she asks Peter fiercely. He shrugs and looks helpless.
“Oh, Peter,
for goodness sake stop being so irresponsible,” Jillian snaps. “You know that she can’t eat cake. Do you want to put her into a coma, or something?”
“I didn’t touch it,” interjects Mummy. “I didn’t eat any of it at all.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mummy. I’m sure you didn’t.” Jillian’s rather angular features soften as she moves to her mother’s side and kisses her on the forehead. “We’re used to Peter, aren’t we? We know that we can’t trust him to use his common sense.”
Mummy looks up at her guilelessly, and in that instant I realise that she is casting herself in the role in which Jillian wishes to see her. The sharp-edged irony that she had displayed to me during the brief time that we were alone has vanished.
Once the door has closed behind Jillian and Peter, some of this urbanity returns. She vouchsafes me that curious smile again, and says:
“Peter’s a very naughty boy, you know. He certainly isn’t to be trusted.” She then rests her head against the rolled-up travelling rug that Jillian has placed at the back of her wheelchair, and closes her eyes. I doubt that she is sleeping, but she does not utter another word until they return.
In the train on the way home, Peter is half-jubilant, half-subdued.
“The old girl’s loaded,” he says. “She’s got far more money than I realised – and the house is worth more than I thought, too. It’s the trust fund that’s the real fly in the ointment. Trust Jillian to think of that. It was so unfair of her not to have told me: and she stands to gain much more from it than I do, because she has two children.”
He pauses and gives me one of his rare straight looks.
“You quite see the position, Hedley. I’ve got to get my hands on my share of the money. We’ve got to make sure that the old girl dies before Jillian has the trust fund set up.”
Chapter Seventeen
Tim Yates had a secret passion that no-one who worked for the police, except Katrin, knew about. He was an avid mountain-biker. Almost the only thing that he found unsatisfactory about his job with the South Lincolnshire police force was the flatness of the terrain. Even going off-road on his bike was difficult enough: the whole of the countryside in South Holland was parcelled up into neat farms and vast square fields with picture-perfect crops of wheat, potatoes and sugar-beet, and because the rich black alluvial soil had not been reclaimed until the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, there were few ancient rights of way. “Trespassers will be prosecuted” signs bristled everywhere, and as a policeman he felt that if he chose to fail to observe them, it would have to be with circumspection. But even when he found a spinney or a piece of wasteland where he could take the bike, exhilarating opportunities to take foolish risks by going at breakneck speed were few. Sure, it was possible to get up a good speed, but there was little danger of coming off the bike, little of the challenge of toiling up steep hills, calf-muscles straining and heart pounding, to make the stomach-scooping descents that he had so loved during his student days in Yorkshire. There was, of course, plenty of opportunity to court danger on the narrow, windy roads on which everyone, farmers included, drove as if they were the last people in the world yet still in a hurry to get to their own funerals, but turning himself into road-kill held no appeal. You were hardly pitting your wits against the limitations of the bike and your own stamina and technical skill if you quarrelled with a juggernaut. Still, even in Lincolnshire he could go out on the bike to think; and now that the mornings were drawing out at last, it was possible to fit in a quick ride before work. Often he achieved this by putting the bike on the back of his car and driving out somewhere, but today was Saturday, so he had simply pedalled sedately out of the town until he reached Spalding Common, where it was possible to race across the fields without fear of reprimand.
In the Family Page 12
