I have no idea where he is at the moment. I had let all of this boil up inside me until I thought I would explode and then, of course, it did erupt into the huge row that we had yesterday evening. Peter went storming out of the flat and I haven’t seen him since. I know that he will be back, though. He didn’t say that he was leaving, just that he was going out; and he didn’t take anything at all with him, not even a toothbrush. I don’t doubt that he spent the night with one of his louche boyfriends. Ugh! His promiscuity is something else that I can’t stand. I thought that it didn’t matter – he has certainly never tried to hide it – but I find that it does. It isn’t so much the fidelity issue, though of course to have a faithful lover would be nice; no, it’s something much more basic than that. To be frank, how do I know where these people have been?
It shouldn’t be too hard to get rid of him; after all, we did say we would review the arrangement every month (his idea) and although he has barely been here for ten days, the cracks are beginning to show. Even he must agree that it isn’t working out. Oh dear – I hope that he doesn’t propose to stay the full month before he will consent to have the conversation.
All this is making me ill, with the same old desperate illness. If he only knew what he was doing.
There’s someone banging about in the corridor outside: I can hear footsteps slipping and sliding. Odd, because we don’t often get drunks in these flats. I supposed it could just be some kids, fooling around. There’s someone scrabbling at the door now. I’ll bet it’s one of those kids from the flat downstairs. Little bastards! I’m going to give them a piece of my mind.
I stride to the door and fling it open. I am horrified when Peter stumbles inside and collapses on the hall floor. He is moaning.
“Hedley, darling boy, please help.” He sounds like a child, helpless and frightened, and he is slurring his words. I cannot see his face, but assume that he is blind drunk. What a disgrace! It is the last thing I need; I have already stretched the terms of my tenancy agreement by having him here at all. I look up and down the corridor, but can see no-one about. I grab hold of Peter’s legs, which are blocking the doorway, and drag him into the flat, turning them ninety degrees so that I can get the door shut. I drop his feet on to the floor without ceremony and slam the door, locking and bolting it for good measure. His trouser legs are torn and muddy, and his usually highly-polished shoes scuffed and spattered.
Peter groans again and remains lying on the floor tiles, face down. He is clearly too drunk to get up. He disgusts me, and I am about to tell him so, when I see a trickle of blood seeping out from under the hand on which his head is resting. A shock of fear runs through me and I kneel down to turn him over. I see that his face is a mass of blood and bruises.
“My God! Peter! What have you been doing?” To my horror he begins to cry.
“I haven’t been doing anything. Can’t you see that, you stupid fucker? I was on my way back when I was attacked. Is my face quite ruined? Tell me what it looks like!” He is crying horribly now, deep sobs which distort the bloody mess yet further. My anger dissolves. I take him in my arms.
“Don’t cry!” I say. “Please don’t cry! I’m going to get a cushion to make you comfortable and then I’ll fetch some warm water to wash your face. It is probably not as bad as it seems.”
He breaks away from me and lies in the foetal position, whimpering. “I can’t live with a damaged face,” he snivels. “My face is what I am. My face is my fortune!”
I feel both exasperated and amused by this and have to resist a very strong urge to laugh. Taking one of the cushions from the small sofa that stands in the hall, I shove it under his head and go to fetch water and towels without saying another word. When I return he is still lying in the same position, his shoulders heaving with sobs.
“Peter,” I say, none too gently. “For God’s sake stop it now. You’re not making it any better by behaving like this. Try to pull yourself together. Sit up so that I can wash your face.”
Meekly, and to my surprise, he does my bidding, in an exhausted kind of way, leaning his back against the sofa for support. I take the piece of muslin that I have brought from the first aid box, squeeze it through the warm water and very gently pass it over his face. Peter flinches, exclaims and tries to shy away.
“Hold still! You know I have to clean the wounds. The less you struggle, the sooner it will be over.” Even to myself, I sound like his nanny. Yet he seems curiously comforted by my having taken charge, and once again tries to obey. I find myself enjoying his subservience!
After I have washed his face two or three times, I can see the extent of his wounds. He has two black eyes, a split lip and a broken tooth. Nothing that won’t heal or can’t be fixed. But I am more perturbed by the rash of tiny pellet marks that I see against his temple. Shotgun pellets, if I’m not mistaken.
“Has someone been shooting at you?”
He shrugs and looks defensive.
“Peter, look at me. Tell me what happened. I can’t help you unless I understand exactly. And if you’ve got some pellets lodged in your head, even superficially, you’re going to have to go to the hospital, because I don’t know how to get them out.”
Peter lets his head loll, and closes his eyes.
“I can’t and won’t go to the hospital,” he says, with some of his old petulance, though it seems to me that this is just a thin disguise to mask his fear.
“Why not?”
“I just can’t, that’s all. You wouldn’t understand, so I can’t explain it to you.”
“You can try.”
“No.” Suddenly he opens his eyes, leans forward, and vomits on the floor.
“My God,” I say. Peter regards his own vomit, horrified. We are both squeamish. I realise that I am going to have to clear it up. I wonder what to do about getting medical help for him. I can see that he needs more than the limited first aid that I can offer.
“Help me to bed,” he says in a thick voice.
“No,” I say. “You can’t go to bed yet. It isn’t safe for you to lie down until we’re sure you aren’t going to be sick again. Besides which, you need a bath. And if I’m going to look after you, you owe it to me to tell me what happened.”
Peter looks sulky. Now that his face is cleaned of mud and blood, I see that, although it is horribly swollen, all of his injuries are superficial. It is only the pellets that worry me.
“All right. But you should take some of the blame for this, so there’s no need to behave so damned self-righteously. If you hadn’t kicked me out last night, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“I didn’t kick you out. You flounced out.”
Rather unexpectedly, he grins. “Ah, yes. I’m rather good at ‘flouncing’, aren’t I?” Gripping the arm of the sofa, he raises himself shakily to his feet and then collapses back on to the sofa’s seat after he catches a glimpse of himself in the gilt ormolu mirror that hangs above it.
“My God!” he says. “Just look at my face! You didn’t tell me how bad it was.” His mouth puckers. I think that he is going to cry again.
“Stop being so childish, Peter!” I say. “You will survive – and you’ll even get your pretty face back again.” His little button eyes dance malignantly, affronted at the jibe. “What you should be worried about are those pellet marks. I can’t tell if they just grazed you, or whether you have some lead shot lodged in your head somewhere.”
He shrugs, make-believe brave.
“And stop creating diversions,” I add. “You were going to tell me what happened. So tell me.”
Peter looks crafty. Although his knuckles are grazed and bloody and there is unaccustomed dirt under his fingernails, he steeples his fingers elegantly and regards me over the top of the pyramid that he has created.
“As you know, I have rather an extensive acquaintance in London,” he says, watching me carefully. “Most of them don�
�t know that I’m here. But on occasion, someone shows up. And it isn’t always someone that I’m particularly rejoiced to see, if you understand me.”
“If you’re going to tell me some sordid tale about a rent boy, then I don’t want to know.”
Peter looks put out.
“Oh, but you said you did want to know. So which is it to be? Anyway, Hugo isn’t a rent boy. I don’t know how you’d describe him. I suppose he is a crook.”
“What do you mean? What sort of crook?”
“Oh, come, now,” Peter says, smiling a little lop-sidedly. “There’s only one kind, isn’t there? A dishonest one. A dishonest man. Someone who breaks the law. A felon.”
He spells out all of these short definitions slowly and with exaggerated patience, as if I am an extremely slow schoolboy whom he is coaching.
“So how do you come to know him? And why does he want to beat you up?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know why he beat me up, or who his friends were. I met him some years ago, when I was much more interested in horses than I am now. I believe that he and I placed a few bets together – we had a kind of little syndicate going.”
“That doesn’t make him a felon. In fact, from the way that you’re telling this story, it sounds suspiciously as if you were the dishonest one. Did you swindle him out of some money – some winnings, perhaps? Is that why he decided to pop you one?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Hedley, stop being so vulgar. Of course I didn’t swindle him – not of anything that was legally his, anyway. And I’m far from sure that he did ‘pop me one’, as you so crudely put it. I seemed to be talking to him perfectly amicably when this fist appeared from nowhere. The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground, and Hugo was nowhere to be seen. I’m convinced there was another person involved. I’d have noticed if Hugo had been about to assault me. Besides, he’s such a nice boy.”
“Really, Peter, I give up.”
“Oh, but you don’t really, do you, darling? I mean, I think you thought you had given up, temporarily, yesterday evening; but now I’ve returned to you in a very delicate state – wounded, no less – you have begun to realise the depth of your affections for me, haven’t you – darling?”
He emphasises the last word with such heavy sarcasm that I feel forced to meet his eyes. They are two glinting little pieces of jet, malevolent and calculating.
“I understand,” he says, in a light and genial voice. “I understand that you lost your temper yesterday. You’re entitled to do that – no-one’s perfect. You’ve been planning to kick me out, haven’t you, Hedley, my sweet? But out of compassion, you’re going to let me stay after all, aren’t you? And if you don’t quite feel sufficient compassion to agree, I have a little bartering counter up my sleeve. Would you like to know what it is?”
He keeps my frozen countenance in his gaze. My scalp crawls with fear. Peter leans forward and pats my hand.
“I’ve found out the truth, Hedley, my friend, my dear, dear lover. I won’t spell it out in detail – I’m sure that you will agree that we can’t be too circumspect. But I want you to know, nevertheless. I know everything. Everything!” he whinnies the last word, his falsetto voice returning for an instant.
“But don’t worry, darling. Everything will be all right. I want to assure you that your secret’s safe with me.” The cliché cannot have been unintentional.
He withdraws his hand.
“Time that you cleared up this horrible mess now, don’t you think?”
I remove my eyes from the grip of his, and look down at my fingers. A gory snail’s trail of blood and mucus is working its way across them.
Chapter Twenty
It was a long, narrow garden, confined by an old red brick wall on both sides. There was a heavy wooden gate at the end which was painted pale green and secured by a bolt and a large padlock. It appeared to lead nowhere more interesting than the yard of the adjacent tractor hire company. The wall on the right-hand side was covered in a profusion of old English roses. That on the left-hand side was bare, save for a few gooseberry bushes that straggled against its lower reaches. The wall itself was streaked with the silver of phosphorus; about ten feet in height, and at least four inches thick, it had been topped at some time in the past with pieces of broken bottle.
Inspector Tim Yates pointed to the jagged shards of glass.
“Not very neighbourly, is it? How long has that been there?”
Ronald Atkins fiddled nervously with his watch-strap.
“Oh, a long time – ever since I can remember, and I grew up here, you know. I think my uncle had it done because at one point there was a very large and rowdy family living next door. The Needhams. My uncle couldn’t abide them.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure that it’s legal – it may have to be removed – but that’s not why we’re here today, as you know. Do you want someone to walk through the garden with you and take an inventory of the plants? You are entitled to have it restored to its original state as far as we can manage, after we’ve finished.”
“I’ll leave that to Doreen. She’s more interested in it than I am.”
Tim looked back towards the house. A tall, untidy-looking woman in her seventies was standing at the sash window, her arms folded across a beige-clad bosom. He could not read the look on her face.
“As you wish. Please tell her that if she wants to take the inventory, she needs to arrange it with one of my officers in the next hour. After that the digging team will arrive.”
For all his deference, Ronald Atkins flushed deeply, evidently angry.
“Is this whole thing really necessary? Could you tell me exactly what you think you might find?”
Inspector Yates regarded him levelly.
“I don’t know, Mr. Atkins. Perhaps you have more idea than I do.”
“Why would I know? I have only just inherited the property.”
“Yes. Why is that? I understand that it is many years since your uncle died.”
Ronald Atkins shrugged. “There was a dispute about who had rightful ownership. My uncle’s will was badly-phrased and ambiguous. I did not prove my case until early this year. Doreen and I only moved in a few months ago.”
“You lived here as a child, though.”
“Yes. But the house belonged to my uncle – and my grandmother. My mother and I lived here on sufferance. She acted as their skivvy, in return for a roof over our heads.”
“You sound very bitter.”
“Bitter? Not really. A little resentful, maybe, of the opportunities that were lost to me because of circumstances. But we were fortunate, really. At the time, many unmarried mothers were sent to mental institutions and their children put out for adoption. I think that my grandmother was unprepared to go that far: after all, my mother was her only daughter. But at the same time she wanted to make the point – in perpetuity, as it were – that my mother had forfeited her rights to equal treatment. My mother was trapped in a life of everlasting penance. My grandmother was a Methodist and had very black and white ideas about morals. Ironically, my mother only found out after her death that she had herself been almost four months pregnant at the time of her marriage. But of course the difference was that my grandfather had married her.”
“It was your mother who looked after the garden?”
“She looked after most things. But she liked the garden. I think it gave her some kind of creative outlet – or maybe just the opportunity to get out of the house. The atmosphere in there could be very oppressive; and even when it wasn’t, my grandmother and Uncle Colin would sit on either side of the fireplace, gazing into each other’s eyes like two spaniels. It must have been galling for my mother, to have been so conspicuously the odd one out.”
“I know I have asked you this before: but why would your first wife have commented that your mother had to die ‘because she was too fond of gardeni
ng’?”
Ronald Atkins shrugged. His moment of expansiveness evaporated, and he was clearly on guard again.
“Who knows why Tirzah said or did things? I know you have read all the case-notes, Inspector, so you must be aware by now that I could neither influence her nor understand her. I had no control over her whatsoever. It was like being married to an alien.”
“Did you think that she was insane?”
“The judge decided that the best place for her was in a secure mental unit.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I realise that; and I hardly know how to answer it. I’ve thought about it, of course; and I’ve come to the conclusion that it depends on your definition of insane. My wife was examined by several psychiatrists and they each said that she had ‘borderline’ something – narcissism, psychosis, depression. I don’t quite understand that term ‘borderline’ – does it mean she was almost normal, or almost mad? One thing of which I am certain is that she was not ‘normal’ in the sense that most people would understand the word. I’m not sure that that means she was insane, however.”
Tim Yates nodded. Ronald’s comments were unhelpful, except in so far as they confirmed the conclusions that he had himself drawn from the case notes, and from talking to the psychiatrists. Once again he determined to gain an opportunity to interview Tirzah properly himself. Her manipulative powers appeared to be very highly developed. He was sure that talking to her at length would be interesting, as well as perhaps leading to the crucial information that was eluding him.
Ronald Atkins shivered.
“I am sorry, Mr. Atkins, I am keeping you out in the cold. Do go back to the house: I will come and find you if I need you again. And please mention the inventory to your wife.”
Ronald Atkins gave him the lop-sided smirk which passed for his smile, and turned his back. He walked swiftly back up the path, a quick, neat figure despite his age.
In the Family Page 15
