She seemed not to be able to stop herself from touching him, and shook his arm impatiently. ‘I don’t see that.’
‘Embarrassin’ for Charlie,’ he explained. ‘He left me standin’ there, Cynth. Outside the jeweller’s.’
‘I know.’
‘Well then.’
She was silent. Her arm fell to her side and she shrugged. Her face was thinner, he thought, no life in it now. There was an awkward pause. This would have been the obvious moment for her to invite them to leave the dreariness of the shed for a cup of tea in the bungalow. It didn’t seem to occur to her.
‘It was only yesterday,’ said Harry, ‘that I found out he didn’t come…’ His hand moved, embracing the confines of the shed. ‘Home,’ he mumbled.
‘So you did come to see me,’ Cynthia cried. Her voice held too much excitement; it overflowed the comment. She was tense, Harry realized.
‘As soon’s I could,’ he assured her.
‘And brought a chaperone.’ Her eyes were bleak when she turned to face Virginia, who grimaced.
‘My chauffeur,’ corrected Harry, and Virginia knew he had it in hand.
‘I thought,’ said Cynthia, who’d not even heard his remark, ‘that you’d have news of Charlie.’
‘I know less than you do.’
‘He just didn’t come back, Harry. Something terrible must’ve happened to him. Must have.’
He was watching her moving about, three paces one way, three the other, as though afraid to be too far from him. Her arms were crossed, hands cupping her elbows. Harry watched with his worried frown.
‘You said “come back” Cynth. Sounds like you knew where he went that day.’
‘I know now. You were on trial, and you’d gone out with him. Of course I knew then. Charlie! What the hell did he think he was doing? An armed robbery, they said on the news. A two-coloured car. Of course I damn well knew it was him. I’d seen the car, in here. And seen what he was doing to it. Of course I knew, you big fool.’
She was becoming agitated. Harry felt at a loss, and searched for Virginia in the shadows, but she was quietly prowling the perimeter, touching this, sniffing that, observing everything.
‘I didn’ quite mean that, Cynth,’ he said quietly, humbly. ‘I meant, did you know he was on somethin’ special when he left?’
‘A feeling,’ she threw at him.
‘What sorta feeling?’
‘What’s the matter with you, Harry, coming here and throwing out your questions?’
He scratched his chin. ‘Thought you could help. I rather wanta meet Charlie, and ask him why he left me on the pavement and dropped me right in it.’
‘But you’d be embarrassed,’ she threw at him, pausing with her legs spread, her palms together in front of her mouth.
‘He would,’ he pointed out. ‘He’d be embarrassed here, if you was in on it. Meet him on his own, and he’d only be bruised.’
‘Hah!’ she said, flinging down her arms.
‘You said you had a feeling, like,’ he reminded her. ‘Before he left. I thought you was out for the day, at your ma’s.’
‘It changed.’ She was impatient. ‘Ma phoned. I can’t remember. But I didn’t go. It was all different, somehow. I came in the shed here. Different. Didn’t smell the same, and Charlie was on edge, the brush in his hand, and he wouldn’t go on with it till I was out of the place. It was all different. And I watched him drive away with you, Harry, up on the old railway track. That was different. I’d never seen both of you together in one of his cars.’
‘You’re right there, come to think of it,’ he conceded, praying for Virginia to intervene. He didn’t know what to say next.
Cynthia herself rescued him. ‘He didn’t phone. If he’d got stuck, I reckoned he’d phone. I spent the whole day outside, with both doors open, to here and to the house, so that I could hear both phones.’
‘Both?’
‘Different numbers. Didn’t you know that, Harry? Ex-directory for the one in here.’
‘Always wondered why I always got him, first ring, never you.’
‘So now you know. Any more questions, Harry?’
The welcome, he realized, had become exhausted. Her voice was brittle.
‘Sorry, Cynth,’ he said, and there must have been in his voice something of the sympathy he felt, because she suddenly gave a choked sob and threw herself at him. Her cheek came opposite his chest. He clutched her to him, feeling her shaking, and the desperation and despair in her outpouring of emotion.
‘There, there,’ he said, his great hand spread against her back, feeling stupid and awkward and inadequate. And then, when her sobs became sniffs and the tension had gone from her, he held her away from him and lifted her chin with his forefinger. ‘I’ll find him for you, Cynth. I’ll find him.’
She stood back, grimaced a faded smile, and thumped him in the chest. ‘And if you do, you can just tell him from me, Harry, that he can drop dead as far as I’m concerned, and if I ever see him again I’ll have his eyes out.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Harry was baffled, not questioning her ability.
‘It must’ve been a woman,’ she said fiercely. ‘What else could it’ve been? He’d been acting strange for ages — months. You can’t tell me…it must’ve been.’
‘He wouldn’t have dared.’
‘How right you are, mate, how bloody right. But Charlie was a coward. Didn’t you know that? He wouldn’t have dared tell me.’
‘That’s how you know?’
She nodded decisively, lower lip caught in her teeth. ‘It’s how I know.’
‘By what he didn’t say?’ He was worrying at it.
Another nod, even more decisive. ‘Exactly. What he didn’t say, when he left me, was “see you”. He always said see you. That time he didn’t. And he didn’t see me again.’
Harry tried to laugh, but it came out wrong and got itself bounced around by the corrugated iron roof.
‘Oh come on, Cynth…you women, you never use any sense. Charlie! Never. You know he thought the world o’ you. Couldn’t talk about anybody else. He’d’ve said somethin’ to me. Sure to’ve done. And there was never a hint. Heh! Somethin’ else. If he’d gone off on purpose, you’d know. He’d have taken his clothes and things. Did he do that, Cynth?’
She looked at him firmly, then down at the toe screwing patterns in the dust, up again. Now there was hope in her eyes. ‘No, Harry, he didn’t.’
‘You see. He was intendin’ to come back to you, Cynth.’
‘But Harry,’ she whispered. ‘In that case, something terrible must have happened, or he would have come back.’
And Harry, faced with the two alternatives that had haunted her for four years, could think of nothing to say. Then Virginia was at his elbow and offering the only possible comfort.
‘But if he intended to return, Cynthia, that’s surely the most important thing.’
Cynthia stared blankly into her eyes, then slowly she seemed to relax, and she nodded.
Virginia put a hand to Harry’s arm. ‘Harry?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he mumbled. ‘We’d better be off. See you, Cynth.’ Then he looked away. It had been an unfortunate choice of exit line.
It seemed ridiculous to Virginia that they left by the same gap in the double doors, walking towards a deserted railway track and seen off by Cynthia silently, instead of a farewell from the front door. But neither Harry nor Cynthia seemed to feel it unusual.
Virginia said nothing until they reached the weed barrier. Then she spoke. ‘I can manage…’
‘Nonsense,’ he said, and picked her up again, plodded through the tangle, and placed her carefully on her feet. ‘Could get to enjoy that,’ he said.
She made no comment, but stood and looked at the car. ‘D’you reckon you can turn it, Harry?’
‘If you’ll shout me round.’
They managed to get the car round and she climbed in beside him.
‘Where now?’ he asked. ‘Reckon
that was a waste of time.’
‘Not at all, Harry. Can you take me to a stream? I need water.’
‘Cynth would’ve given you a drink.’
‘Not to drink. Any sort of water.’
The car was rumbling along, its exhaust puttering a protest at the depleted speed.
‘There’s the quarry, if that’ll do.’
‘Possibly. And it wasn’t a waste of time. I think I know why your friend Charlie painted a black car two other colours.’
And Harry, who had been deeply affected by Cynthia’s distress, registered his disappointment in Virginia’s apparent lack of feeling by saying, ‘Well…good for you.’
He said it in a dismissive tone, which sent up her eyebrows in surprise, until she realized why. Then, for a moment, her sight blurred.
Chapter Six
The difficulty, Virginia decided, was that Harry was becoming enmeshed with old friends and acquaintances. His emotions were involved, but not hers, and she was being left out in the cold, watching and observing but feeling nothing. This was not what she had wanted. She had a feeling that Angela, whatever her faults of impetuosity and ridiculous enthusiasms, and with her spirit packed full with crackling emotions and warm, deep compassion, could not have lost her life in a cold and casual manner. Even her death would have been involved with emotion. It therefore followed that the understanding of it would also entail a feeling for the emotions involved, and Virginia was concerned that she was encountering ones that were outside her experience.
Harry shamed her with his naïve perception. He was turning out to be more sensitive than a large and ugly man had any right to be. She had assumed his assistance would have been mainly physical, but it was beginning to seem that she was wrong in that.
‘Did you hear what she called me?’ she asked, probing his understanding.
‘Bitch or witch. It wasn’t personal.’
‘That shotgun was damned personal.’
‘I don’t think she’d have fired it.’
Damn him, she thought, you could never tell from the tone of his voice what he was thinking. ‘You don’t think she would? Don’t tell me she’s always been unpredictable.’
Harry concentrated on his driving, at a time when it wasn’t needed. ‘She’s not crazy, if that’s what you mean. Just…well, she sort of always felt things pretty strong. All love and kisses, or scratches and kicks.’ The stacks of the two chimneys were now visible. ‘You still want the quarry?’
‘It’s water I want, so we’ll try the quarry. Harry, don’t you realize, she was expecting a woman. Cynthia was. Bitch or witch, that’s a woman. And she was talking about her Charlie having gone off with a woman. Surely they can’t be the same person! I just can’t see Charlie’s woman coming to visit Charlie’s wife.’
‘Charlie’s woman my ass,’ he said angrily. ‘Charlie didn’ have no woman. He was proud of Cynth. Couldn’t talk about anythin’ without coming out with something like Cynth says this and Cynth says that. Y’ can always tell, if they’re proud of the missus.’
‘She’d be a handful.’
‘Kept life interestin’. Or so he said.’
‘He told you she was a handful?’
‘Didn’t need to tell me. But he did say she kept life interestin’. Mind you, he was drunk at the time.’
‘In vino veritas,’ she said as he drew the car to a halt.
‘As you say, if it’s not filthy.’
He sat back. They had reached the point where he was about to turn off the hardcore and into the old loading area.
‘But Harry,’ she said, ‘if your Charlie thought so much of her how would he feel if he got the idea she was seeing another man?’
‘What…Cynth?’
‘Would he challenge her with it? Would he tackle the man and warn him off, perhaps beat him up?’
‘Heh, heh, you’re getting fancy ideas. Charlie wasn’t like that. Kinda shy. Quiet like. Nothin’ violent for Charlie.’
‘Are we talking about the Charlie who charged into a jeweller’s with a rod in his hand?’ she asked, her voice delicately poised.
‘A rod?’ He laughed. ‘Where’ve you been? And that Charlie, I’m telling you, was scared sh…outa his wits. Didn’t I say how he was dropping things an’ trampling on’em? He’d really got the shakes. It don’t alter what I said. Charlie wouldn’t face Cynth, if she did have another bloke, nor face him. He’d be sorta…I dunno, shocked and disappointed, like she’d let him down. It’d be like walkin’ into a club and finding your wife doin’ a strip on the stage.’ He pointed. ‘Look, we turn left here, if you want the quarry, round the back of the buildings.’
Before he could slip his foot from the brake to throttle, she touched his arm, to restrain him. ‘Let’s talk it through. So Charlie wouldn’t have cut-up rough. What would he have done?’
‘Ask yourself. Suffered.’
‘In silence? And not reacted? Wouldn’t he, perhaps in retaliation, have found himself another woman? Wouldn’t he have tried to find someone else he could walk with, on his arm, and feel proud that she was there?’
‘And all this,’ he said, squinting at her against the sun, ‘is based on what he might’ve thought about Cynth and another man? It’s a bit much, ain’t it?’
‘Remember how you met her? The disco. You threw out the chap she was with. And that was three years before the day of the robberies. A lot can happen in three years.’
He slid the car into motion. It permitted him to keep his eyes from hers. ‘The trouble with you,’ he informed her, ‘is that it’s all damn theory. You want everything to fit into little pockets of cause an’ effect. Nothin’s like that. People don’t do anything ’cause it’s the right thing to do at the right time. They do daft things. So reasoning’ll get you nowhere.’
He was telling her that her god of logic was a false prophet. She lifted her chin. ‘I’ll remember your advice, Harry.’
‘And anyway…’ There was no sign of triumph in his voice. ‘That feller I threw out was only the one she was dancin’ with — if you can call it dancin’. She’d come with a woman friend. Remember?’
‘I remember. So my reasoning is all a load of rubbish, and Charlie would have been heading back to Cynthia after the robbery?’
He nodded, then stopped the car because the abrupt downgrade facing them was steep, and would have been impossible to negotiate if the surface had been wet. It was clear that the reason for the closing of the brickworks had not been any shortage of clay. Everywhere she looked there was the red smear of clay, still, after all these years, predominant. They had dug into a hillside, then down and outwards, forming a bowl into which the approach, at the head of which they were now parked, had dipped at a progressively steeper angle. Now it was impossible to see the depth to which the pit had been quarried. The clay-surfaced ramp ahead of the car proceeded for only fifty feet before it dipped into the brown surface of the water. There was no sign of any green growth, no weed, no algae. The water lay like a sheet of burnished bronze, beyond it, in an arc, a cliff of red earth.
‘We can walk down it, now it’s dry,’ said Harry. ‘But don’t try paddling. They say it’s two hundred feet deep. The first thing they teach the kids in the village school is that it’s full of ghosts an’ ghoulies, to keep ’em away.’
‘Let’s walk down, then, and have a word with them.’
Harry shrugged, and got out of the car. She stood the other side, hitching the strap of her bag on to her shoulder. ‘Don’t look so miserable, Harry. I’ve got a reason.’
‘I’m not miserable. Inside, I’m singin’ hymns o’ praise. It just don’t show. You going to be all right in them shoes?’
‘Safer,’ she assured him, ‘than with you carrying me.’
They walked down to the water, heavily on their heels and leaning back. It was not until they reached it that she was able to dispel a disbelief that it was genuine water. No breath of air stirred its surface. She crouched and touched it with her finger. It was wate
r.
‘Harry,’ she said, demanding his concentration, ‘Charlie used a black Escort that day. He asked you to get him a black one. Then he painted it red one side and green the other. To confuse the police, he told you, but it now seems certain it was to attract police attention, because he was probably working as a decoy, as an accomplice with the bank robbers. His job was to draw off the police, and try not to be caught himself. It seems he was successful, because he wasn’t picked up.’
She paused. Harry stared out over the water. ‘Nobody’s arguing.’ His tone indicated that his agreement was in suspension.
‘But there was the question of why he painted both halves of the car, instead of just one half of it.’
‘Your question. Me, I’m saying nowt.’
She bit her lip. He was not responding, and she was a person who needed encouragement. Sometimes, she was well aware, her surface confidence was false. Self-criticism had a tendency to intrude, caused by an ability to see more sides to an argument than her own. She now needed Harry’s support, his agreement, to point her along one specific corridor of thought. But he seemed still to be upset by Cynthia.
‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘My question. I thought that if he’d only wanted a two-coloured car which would stand out, he could have asked you to get him a red one and paint half of it green, or paint it psychedelic or something. You do see what I mean?’
‘Oh sure, sure. I just thought…’ He moved his shoulders almost impatiently, but Harry was tired. He’d exercised his brain too much that day already, and brainwork was exhausting. ‘I just thought he’d kinda not worked it out…sorta nervous about what we were going to do. I told you — people do daft things.’
‘You heard what Cynthia said, though. It was a special job. He wouldn’t go on with it while she was there. He was being careful, not careless.’
He attempted to squeeze his nose into a more elegant shape. ‘That’s true enough.’
‘And the smell was different, Cynthia said. And Harry, she told us he was using a brush.’
He turned and looked at her. ‘She did, too.’ Now she had his interest.
She smiled up at him. ‘I saw cans that had contained a water-based paint. I don’t know what that is. Probably something like whitewash with pigment in. One was called Cardinal Red. And on the bench were two empty cans, each with a four-inch brush in it. Dry, of course, but they could have had water in, and not paint thinners. So I took one of the brushes.’
The Second Jeopardy Page 6
