Veil of Darkness

by Gillian White

  ‘Oh come, come, Mr Derek, I am not one of your average punters. A five-star hotel like this must keep at least one vacant double room. I got in without much trouble.’

  ‘Only because of a last-minute cancellation.’

  ‘I would advise her to leave, but she seems to want to stay here for some undisclosed reason,’ says Candice, leaning back and stretching, flicking her ash aimlessly onto the marble floor. ‘If you do have a room available it would look pretty bad in the interviews if Bernadette was denied it because she was a mere barmaid.’

  ‘I see your point.’

  ‘I thought you might. And remember, one day Bernadette Kavanagh might be well worth knowing. Now, how about a pudding?’ And Candice Love disappears for one merciful moment behind an enormous, shiny white menu. Only her long scarlet nails are showing like streaks of blood on the edges.

  ‘You know I don’t want anything to do with this. I don’t want any part of it,’ says Kirsty quickly after hearing about the sudden upheaval.

  ‘But I want you with me,’ splutters Bernie, ‘dammit, I need you. I wouldn’t mind staying here, but Candice seems to think I should cash in on this opportunity. The Burleston are offering a free double room on the strength of what Candice has told them. Mr Derek, the slime ball, thinks I might be famous some day.’

  ‘You know why I have to stay out of this.’

  ‘Candice says some early press interest will help push the bids up.’ Bernie shakes her head in astonishment, loosening her thick, silky hair. ‘I still can’t believe the kind of money she’s talking. D’you realize that, if this is real, none of us will ever have to work again?’

  ‘But we can’t share Kirsty’s money now,’ worries the flustered Avril, meeker than ever, out of her depth and embarrassed that Bernie should suggest such a thing. ‘Not in these circumstances.’

  ‘I said we would split this three ways, and that’s what we’ll do,’ says Kirsty, who cannot envisage £10,000 let alone a million. ‘You’re going to have to work for it, it’s not coming for free. But I can’t help you out any more. It’s all down to you and Avril.’

  ‘But how can we move out and leave you here? Look at it. It’s disgusting.’

  She never believed this would work so well. It is only with a great effort of will that Kirsty can go on with the plot. It seems to have blown up in her face; her little deceit has taken her over, her simple dream has become menacing. ‘You can and you must,’ she says with dull courage, now more fraught than ever for fear that her devious deed will be revealed. If this book is destined for fame, filmed and sold all over the world, surely someone, somewhere, will remember this early work by Ellen Kirkwood? She and the future of her kids will be destroyed by the scandal.

  ‘But it’s wrong, it’s not fair, all the money will go straight to Bernie,’ Avril bursts out, her face puckered anxiously.

  ‘Oh. So don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Of course we trust you,’ Kirsty reassures her, while Avril sighs and folds her hands in unhappy resignation. ‘You will have to divide it three ways, that’s all. That’s if Candice Love isn’t talking out of the back of her head, and I still can’t believe—’

  ‘No-one can,’ says Bernie, pleased, unconsciously running her hands over her beautiful body. ‘That’s why we’re getting all this attention, no-one as young and stupid as me has ever written a book like this. I’m going to Truro with Candice tomorrow to get some new gear for the interviews.’

  Avril just cannot accept it. ‘But it’s Kirsty who ought to be going. It’s Kirsty who should be giving up work. She’s going to be cleaning our room while we live like queens. Kirsty’s only human, how long can she keep that up?’

  ‘As long as it takes,’ says Kirsty. ‘I don’t mind cleaning rooms.’

  ‘Or being suspected when anything’s missing, or watching an old black and white telly, sleeping on broken springs and eating reheated food.’

  ‘It won’t be for ever.’

  ‘She’s right,’ says Bernie, ‘and that’s where women like you fall down, Avril. Too short-sighted. Too small-minded. You have to trust me, there’s no alternative. If this works out Kirsty can buy Trevor off and get him out of her life.’

  But now Kirsty is silent. There is another, bad side to this equation. If she had money she could travel, that’s true; she could take the kids out of the country, even if Trevor did fight for custody and get it with his convincing lies. But the law is the law wherever you go and Kirsty would not want to live in some backwater of the world like Ronnie Biggs—all bungalows, bars and swimming pools—in some corrupt, lawless nation, for ever a fugitive from home.

  She notices that her knuckles are white and hides them in her overall pockets.

  No. She is under no illusions. If Trevor got wind of pound signs he would be relentless in his pursuit of her and his children. He would sell his soul for money. No matter how good and expensive her defence, somehow he would triumph over her, as he’s always done, making her falter, stammer, forget, mistake what she means, crumble. If Magdalene had really been written by her maybe she would have the self-confidence boost to fight the dragon on her own terms. But Kirsty hasn’t discovered her talent, she is merely a cheat and a liar, and these actions do nothing to build her self-worth, if anything they reduce it.

  Kirsty’s wounds are deep, deeper than anyone knows.

  But she forces a smile as she listens to Bernie and Avril discussing their new station in life. They are off to the main hotel tonight on Candice Love’s instructions. They are to dine with her this evening while they discuss ‘essential strategies’.

  There is a sharp knock on the door.

  ‘Come in.’

  Nobody has ever bothered to knock before.

  Moira Stokes stands like a ghost in the doorway; she stands there stiffly in her high-necked dress, every button carefully fastened.

  ‘I hope you have gathered your things together,’ she addresses Bernadette with an acid politeness. ‘As soon as you are ready we are to move you into the main hotel.’

  Bernie nods while poor Avril blushes.

  ‘And you,’ she says to Kirsty, ‘will have this room to yourself.’

  ‘That’ll be nice for her,’ says Bernie. ‘She’ll be able to get up to all sorts of tricks under the covers. All on her own.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ says Mrs Stokes. ‘You might be dazzled by all this excitement, but you ought to remember who you are.’

  ‘I am a famous author.’ Bernie laughs, getting up and twirling round deliberately to annoy Mrs Stokes.

  ‘Not yet, you’re not,’ snaps Mrs Stokes. ‘You might yet find this is all a sham. You should remember the wise old adage, don’t count your chickens before they hatch.’

  ‘At least I’ve got some eggs,’ says Bernie. ‘Unlike you.’

  Kirsty stands by her bed and says nothing, screwing and unscrewing the knobs of the bedstead. She thinks of the dingy bindings and the dusty smell of the old book.

  ‘It seems that somehow you have missed out,’ says Mrs Stokes unkindly.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ says Kirsty quietly, her face blank and set. All she wanted was a couple of thousand to buy an old car and equip the caravan. ‘I’m quite happy as I am.’

  ‘If you expect me to believe that then I’ll eat my hat,’ says Mrs Stokes. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd, and that’s what has happened here. Perhaps,’ she says, ‘your day will come,’ as she goes out and quietly closes the door.

  ‘Cow,’ says Bernadette, considering her image in the cracked old mirror.

  And Kirsty gives the bed knob such a twist that it comes right off in her hand.

  Fourteen

  MURDER MOST DASTARDLY.

  An old lady of seventy-nine killed for £1.39 and the streets crawling with homicidal maniacs oozing up from the bowels of hell.

  The hunt is robust and bloodthirsty, baying voices howling for justice echo from tabloid to poster to street corner and back, and Graham Stott, fugitive from
justice, guilty of the most abominable of crimes, keeps his head well down like Brier Fox. He creeps through mean backstreets that resemble an eerie London Whitechapel, or ventures into the semi-green countryside and uses the stanchions of motorway bridges for cold and unfriendly cover.

  So far nobody knows who the culprit could possibly be, but the police are out in full force to pacify a horrified public. Those out in community care, the senile, the odd bods, the drunks and the druggies, are all pulled in for questioning.

  ‘She was a right card, was old Annie, gave us a song before she left, although she’d just lost twenty quid at the bingo. A dab hand on the harmonica long as she took her teeth out first.’

  ‘She’d had a hard life, had Annie, lost her husband last year of the war. Had to struggle to bring up three kids…’

  ‘We’ll miss her terribly,’ says an eldest son who hasn’t seen Annie in years. It was just that her escalating drinking habits were so unsavoury in front of the children.

  But Graham didn’t mean to kill the old bat; if only he could take time back he could have ripped her bag off her gently. It’s no good appealing for clemency this time—after his conviction for burglary the pundits made out that because the old woman upstairs had feigned sleep, she had been remarkably lucky. This unjustified connection with violence is so bloody unfair; just because he ran with a gang whose leaders were done for GBH—and that was way back when he was a kid—they have always assumed he would, one day, be dangerous. What do the shrinks know anyway? Graham can wrap them round his little finger, them and their transparent ink blots.

  The papers are still full of his crime.

  His brain is working, always working.

  Sometimes he plays with the dream that the mugging never really happened.

  Sometimes, dawdling at a shop window, he thinks he’s being followed.

  Sometimes he thinks people look at him strangely.

  But God, what evidence had he left behind him? What would they do if they caught him? How long would he get? He would probably get sent to a high-security nick this time. Perhaps he would need protection, one of those wankers on the special wing.

  And come out with AIDS.

  Now he has no mates left in Liverpool except for a few crazed potheads in squats who would give him away for less than a fiver. His fellow gaol inmates are scattered around, boozing away their days or injecting it in the kind of dives watched by the pigs, not the sort of hostelries best suited for Graham at this moment. And when it comes to a crime like murder—murder of an old woman—even the hard men don’t want to know, there’s no kudos in that; it’s not like working for your dealers.

  Graham lights a fag and strolls out of the shadowed doorway. He has to get right away from here, away from the streets that know him, but it feels like breaking into the open, into the vast unknown. London is too obvious, and anyway, Graham doesn’t know London. Then there’s the problem that if they pull him in in some strange city, they’ll think he is on the run, assume he is guilty.

  He seizes on one glimmer of comfort and walks with a feigned carelessness, a cigarette between his lips and one hand in his pocket.

  Not if he does something perfectly natural, like going to visit his sister. I mean, here he is, jobless and homeless, what more reasonable reaction could there be than to leave the city where he has no prospects and try his luck down in Cornwall? Graham laughs silently. He must keep cool and get this in proportion. How inconsequential he really is; he looks just the same as every other guy in bomber jacket and frayed jeans. He might get a seasonal job, although they’re already halfway through August, it might be worth a try. And nobody is going to think of looking for the China Town murderer in the frigging armpit of the world.

  Graham is not the only member of the Stott family from Huyton to be heading for Cornwall on this sunny Saturday. The Bluebird caravan has been hosed down and connected to the green Ford Sierra, which is just back from its annual service. In the miniature fridge and the cupboards, groceries, fruit, cans and packs are stacked and neatly labelled. Well, Avril’s mother is certainly not prepared to pay the kind of inflated prices they charge at caravan parks.

  Both Stotts are exhausted after a night of heated discussion, Mrs Stott wanting to set out at dawn and Mr Stott saying it’s unnecessary.

  ‘But we always leave at dawn.’

  ‘There’s no need, now we haven’t got the children.’

  ‘Well, on your head be it then.’ And she despises him for his lack of adventure.

  The car’s back seat is given over almost entirely to Fluffy the cat, and after the animal is settled in position the little vanilla pine tree that hangs over the windscreen is overpowered by the stench of feline flatulence. ‘If you can read this you are too close.’ The sticker on the back window, which Mr Stott still considers a hoot, will be obscured by the weaving caravan on the journey down today.

  The packed lunch is kept in a cool box. The Stotts will park at the motorway services but will purchase nothing there. The prices are quite outrageous, and most of the food tastes like cardboard. In her white summer handbag Mrs Stott keeps a folded oval piece of transparent plastic and a pair of surgical gloves, which she uses when visiting public conveniences—she has read about the faecal horrors on public lavatory chains, not to mention the lethal content in wrapped, cut sandwiches.

  ‘Avril will be pleased to see us,’ says Mrs Stott on the motorway, sucking a barley sugar nervously. She feels good in her smart new slacks and a shimmery sweatshirt with a gold leopard embroidered upon it. The leopard’s eyes shine redly in front of Mrs Stott’s nipples. ‘And I’m sure it’s time we paid her a visit. I’m getting quite worried about Avril; she sounds so different on the phone.’

  ‘She’ll be pleased to see Fluffy,’ says Mr Stott, in the slow lane.

  ‘I think it’s those friends she’s got mixed up with. I don’t like the sound of them.’

  ‘So long as she’s happy,’ says Mr Stott, casual, today, in his holiday tracksuit and large, startlingly white trainers.

  Mrs Stott feels her anger rising. She cracks the barley sugar hard between her teeth till it’s crushed to smithereens in her mouth. ‘That’s just it, Richard. That says it all, doesn’t it? That’s always been your attitude and look where it got us with Graham.’

  ‘Don’t let’s get into that now, dear.’

  ‘And I hope that’s not a traffic jam I see!’

  ‘It won’t last long, probably roadworks.’

  ‘Roadworks in August, I ask you.’ But if Richard had listened to her and left home at dawn they would be there by now… without this awful queuing.

  The Stotts have booked into Happy Stay, the caravan park near Burleston that caters for both the cruising and the larger static. As usual, Mr Stott sent off to the AA for a route, and Mrs Stott sits with this on her knee, even though the journey is quite straightforward and nobody needs to refer to it. With luck they will see Avril at least once every day and they hope to have a look round the hotel and perhaps take tea in the pavilion if the charges are not too exorbitant. The rest of the time they will visit gardens, a particular favourite of Avril’s mother, a few country houses and craft shops. They will not eat out. They will take their own sandwiches every day and have a hot meal when they return.

  ‘I hope they approve of Ed.’

  ‘They will, Avril, stop worrying.’

  ‘I wish they weren’t coming here.’.

  ‘Well why didn’t you stop them?’

  ‘Because they booked two months ago and Mother and Father never change their plans.’

  ‘They won’t believe it when they see you here. When they know what’s been happening.’

  Bernie’s right. Avril can hardly believe it herself. Here they are on a Saturday, sitting out on their balcony, while in the room behind them there is a wonderful, huge, split four-poster bed and a tiny dressing room surrounded by mirrors, in which there is a spare put-you-up. They bounced away on that first night on a mattress high a
nd springy, in bedding which foamed with masses of lace, embroidered coverlets and white cotton.

  ‘Poor Kirsty.’

  ‘I know. Poor old Kirsty.’

  For Avril the small press conference was one long nightmare—not so for Bernie, however. But that was fine because Avril was merely a hanger-on, not the star, not the young genius, the literary talent freshly discovered by those who know greatness when they see it.

  ‘You just sit there, Avril, and try not to smile too broadly,’ said Candice Love, ‘nobody’s going to ask you anything. You are Bernadette’s right hand, her friend and confidante, her first and greatest fan, no-one will want to speak to you so there’s no need to adopt that goofy expression.’

  In fact, Candice Love did most of the talking, taking the literary press by storm by declaring the astonishing interest being shown, worldwide, for this young girl’s first novel. ‘And all the while here she was, a nobody, a little Irish barmaid from Liverpool, grateful for any employment she could get, working her heart out for peanuts…’

  Here Mr Derek cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably.

  ‘… and now, suddenly, the world is at this author’s feet, clamouring for the rights to her work, from Hollywood to Frankfurt, from New York to Hong Kong. Yes, this author makes Ruth Rendell and P. D. James look like beginners in the art of plotting; it places Margaret Drabble and Aldous Huxley back in some literary kindergarten and yet it appeals to all nations, all ages, is timeless, is magnificent.’

  ‘This must have been a great shock for you, Bernie. Can you give us your reaction to all this?’

  Bernie smiled charmingly and captivated them all. ‘I am overwhelmed by it. To be honest, it hasn’t really sunk in yet.’

  ‘Is there another book in the offing?’

  ‘You’ll have to wait and see,’ smiled Bernie.

  ‘And what about your mum and dad? What do they think about all this?’

  ‘Mum wet her knickers and said the Hail Mary and Dad nearly passed out. It’s all this dosh that’s knocked them flat—like winning the bloody lottery.’