Borrowed Time
Page 20
“Oh, perfect! Our last chance of saving her blown. Because you go to bloody Lord’s and get pissed with Simon. That really is wonderful.”
“For God’s sake, I wasn’t to know.” If blame was to be distributed, I didn’t mean to take more than my share. “Sarah swore me to silence about Rowena’s overdose. And your husband pleaded with me to say nothing to her about Benefit of the Doubt. Maybe if you’d tried to understand her misgivings before the trial; maybe if you’d trusted her just a—”
“Keith didn’t plead with you to give Seymour an interview. Or to pour out some psycho-babble to the wretched man about Louise’s state of mind the day she died.”
“No, but—”
“And since you seem to be trying to shuffle off responsibility for what’s happened, I may as well mention something I was intending to spare you. But it makes more sense now you’ve admitted it was you she rang, so you may as well know. When Sarah got back to her flat, the TV was still on. With the Benefit of the Doubt video freeze-framed on the interview with you. So now you know why she wanted to speak to you, don’t you?”
“To ask which version was the truth,” I murmured in reply, as much to myself as to Bella. “The one I told at the trial. Or the one I hinted at in the interview. The one she forced herself to believe. Or the one she could never quite forget.”
“And what would you have told her?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure of the answer any more. I suppose I never was.”
Bella sat down again, stabbed out her cigarette and glared across at me. “Why couldn’t you just leave it alone, Robin, eh? She was getting over it. They all were. Keith’s been so happy recently. Really enjoying his retirement. And now . . .”
“I’m sorry, Bella. Sorry for everything. But even if I’d done and said nothing, Bantock would still have written his book. Seymour would still have made his programme. The questions—and the doubts—would still have been raised.”
“And maybe Rowena could have borne them. But for your intervention. Have you considered that?”
“Yes. I’ve considered it. Kind of you to point it out, though.”
Bella plucked off her sunglasses and stared at me. I think she may have felt she’d gone too far. But a softening of her tone was the only concession she offered. “Keith, Sarah and Paul are going to need all my help to recover from this. It’s like a blow to an unhealed wound. I have to think of them before anyone else.”
“I understand that.”
“I’m not sure exactly when the funeral’s going to be, but I think it would be best if you left them alone until it’s out of the way, don’t you? Until it’s well out of the way.”
I’d expected it, of course. This exile from their company as well as their affections. I’d brought it on myself. Yet it still hurt. “You’ll let me know when and where? I’d like to . . . send some flowers.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“If there’s anything—”
“There is, as a matter of fact.”
“What?”
“Speak to Sophie Marsden. Find out what the hell she meant by saying those things to Seymour. It’s eating Keith up. The fear that there was some truth in it. I doubt there was, personally. Louise was no good-time girl. Not according to everybody I’ve spoken to about her. In which case, I’d like to know why Sophie Marsden chose to depict her as one. Keith looked on Sophie as a friend. Her behaviour’s shocked him even more than yours.”
“What makes you think she’ll open her heart to me?”
“You’re on her side, aren’t you?”
“Of course not. There are no—”
“Besides, I wouldn’t trust myself in her presence. I need an intermediary. If you want to repair some of the damage you’ve done . . .”
“All right. I’ll be your messenger boy.” My reluctance was mostly show. I wanted to prise Sophie’s motives out of her as much as Bella did, if not more so. Our one brief meeting at Rowena’s wedding had left me with the strange and disturbing impression that she knew something about me that I didn’t even know myself. It was high time I found out what it was.
Bella had given me Sophie’s phone number. I tried it as soon as I got home. But Sophie was out, according to her husband.
“You’re not another of these bloody journalists, are you?”
“No. More like another victim of them.”
“I’ll tell her you called, in that case.”
There was something faintly familiar in his mournful voice. I could almost have believed I’d spoken to him before. But when would I have crossed paths with somebody in the agricultural machinery business? Never seemed the likeliest answer.
No less than five hours later, rousing me from drink-deepened slumber, Sophie called back. She didn’t sound in the least drowsy, even though the hall clock had struck one as I stumbled to the phone. Nor, to my fuddled surprise, did she seem at all reluctant to meet.
“I think we probably should, don’t you? In the circumstances.”
“Well, obviously I do. But—”
“Would London suit you? We have a small flat in Bayswater. I’m thinking of going down there for a few days next week. The summer sales may cheer me up. I’ve felt quite awful since the news about Rowena.” The idea that a spendthrift spin round Harrods could reconcile her to the needless extinction of a young girl’s life disgusted me more keenly than for the moment my tired brain could grasp. “Why not come to tea on Tuesday?”
“All right. Where do you—”
“Six, Godolphin Terrace. I’ll expect you about three thirty.”
“OK. I—”
“See you then. ’Bye.”
By the time I got back to bed, I was alert and fully awake. Had she delayed her call until her husband was asleep? I wondered. If so, why should she want to keep our appointment secret? Anyone would think it was an illicit liaison. And why—yes why—was she not just willing but eager for us to meet?
Such thoughts pushed sleep effortlessly aside and left me to toss and turn through the brief summer’s night, tracing and retracing in my mind the sequence of events leading from Louise Paxton’s murder to her daughter’s suicide. Rowena’s self-destruction was in some senses the more awful death. She was so fragile, so vulnerable, so patently in need of protection. There should have been some way to save her. There should have been and probably there had been. But it had been neglected, overridden in the pursuit of other claims, other fleeting impulses. By me among others. And what did the others really matter when I closed my eyes and saw, in images I couldn’t suppress, that slender figure falling from the bridge, arms outstretched, with a diary left behind her on a call-box shelf and my face blurred and flickering on a television screen?
Dawn was only a few hours away. When it came, I was already washed and dressed. The idea of spending a solitary Sunday lying low at Greenhayes wasn’t just intolerable. It was quite simply inconceivable. Bella had told me to leave them alone and so I would. The living, that is. But nobody could stop me going in search of the dead. I’d stood in the room where Louise had been murdered. Now I had to stand on the bridge from which Rowena had leapt. It wasn’t a matter of choice. It was something I had to do.
Clifton was still and quiet as the grave so early on a Sunday morning. But the sun was already warm on my back as I walked up Sion Hill and risked a glance along Caledonia Place. A milk float was humming towards me from the far end. I watched as it chinked to a stop near Sarah’s door and wondered, if I waited, whether I’d see her come out to collect a bottle. She’d be awake, I had no doubt. She wouldn’t have slept any better than me. But at the thought of what might happen if she spotted me, I pressed on.
Now I was probably retracing Rowena’s footsteps of three days before. Following the curve of Sion Hill, with the suspension bridge dominating the view to my left. The hangers looked no thicker than twine from this distance. And the depth of the gorge wasn’t apparent. It could have been a footbridge across a shallow stream. Except I knew it wasn’t.
I moved on. Past the control-box and the toll barriers. Round the giant left foot of the pylon. And out onto the bridge. The railings were about five feet high, fenced in with flimsy mesh and topped with blunt wooden spikes. No real obstacle for the desperate or the determined. And Rowena must have been both that day. They said she’d jumped from the centre. I glanced ahead and behind as I went to make sure I knew when I’d reached the point where she must have stopped. When I had, I stopped too. And looked down for the first time.
So far. So awesomely far. Sunlight twinkled benignly on the winding river and gilded the fat wrinkled mud-banks. The Bristol to Avonmouth main road hugged the eastern side of the river and the height I was above it sowed a fleeting illusion in my mind. That it and the few cars moving along it were toys I’d laid out on my bedroom floor as a child. Toys I could pick up or dismantle at will. Then the huge gap of empty air rushed into my consciousness and I stepped back, appalled. Good God almighty. What a thing to do. What an act to have not just the wish but the courage to carry out. To find a foothold and climb onto the railings. And then what? Leap from there? Or lower yourself down until your toes were resting on the narrow sill at the foot of the railings, then turn round and let yourself fall? The deliberation. The decision. And the deed. All reversible. All nullifiable. Until the fraction of a second after letting go, when wind and gravity plucked your freedom away. And your life had only that long plummeting moment to last.
Why had she done it? Standing there in the centre of the bridge, I felt a wave of nausea sweep over me. I stared up into the sky until it had passed. Then I looked down again. And knew. It wasn’t the lies we’d told you, was it, Rowena? It wasn’t the thought that we’d implicated you in a possible miscarriage of justice. Nor the fear that you’d never known your mother for what she truly was. It was none of those things. Not in the end. Not when you came to the point of no return. “She was on the brink,” you’d said of her. “She was about to step off.” I remembered now. “Into the void.” Your words. “She knew it.” Your every word. “And still she stepped.” You had to know, didn’t you? You had to find out. “Why?” I couldn’t tell you. Nobody could. You knew that. And, watching the video, you must have realized it would never be any different. Unless you followed her. Unless you surrendered to the impulse you’d tried to bury. “The thought of it can be so exhilarating.” Yes. Of course. “So tempting.” And so very very final.
It was mid-morning before I left Bristol. I drove slowly, hardly knowing whether it was better to stay or to go. Somewhere near Warminster, I turned on the radio and found myself listening to the cricket commentary from Lord’s. The Test Match was still going on. When it had started, I’d actually been quite interested in the outcome. But Rowena had been alive then. Now it seemed like a transmission from another planet. There were tears filling my eyes as I stabbed the “off” switch. And there was comfort in the silence that followed.
Tuesday came. And with it my appointment in London. After putting in a desultory morning at work, I walked to the station and caught a lunchtime train to Waterloo. Then I took the long way round the Circle line to Bayswater and tracked down Godolphin Terrace.
It turned out to look less grand than it sounded. The houses had all the traditional touches: four stuccoed storeys plus attic and basement, complete with pillared porch and dolphin door-knocker. But some were beginning to look dilapidated. One or two would be ripe for squatters if the residents didn’t watch out. Though Sophie Marsden, I felt sure, could be relied on to do that.
Number 6 was in good order, brasswork polished, paint gleaming. When I rang Sophie’s bell, she answered promptly.
“Robin?”
“Yes.”
“Push when you hear the buzzer. I’m on the second floor.”
I was in. And when I reached the second landing, she was waiting at her door. Newly coiffured, I reckoned, though presumably not for my benefit. But her close-fitting dress made me think, as I followed her into a tastefully furnished lounge, that I might be wrong. Perhaps flirtation was to be her counter to whatever line she expected me to take. If so, I didn’t propose to let it work.
“There’s tea, of course. But I fancy a gin and tonic myself. You?”
“All right.”
I moved to the window while she poured them and gazed down into the street. Sooner than I’d anticipated, she was at my elbow, glass in hand, smiling enigmatically. “Afraid someone might be following you, Robin?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Here’s your drink. Let’s sit down.”
A sofa and two armchairs were arranged around a low table in front of a huge marbled fireplace, an aspidistra in a copper pot filling the grate. A mass of gold-edged invitations crowded out the bric-à-brac on the mantelpiece, above which hung a gloomy oil painting of what looked like the Tower of Babel. Sophie took one end of the sofa and patted the cushion of the adjacent armchair. I sat down and sipped at my drink, resisting a powerful urge to take several large gulps. Then I noticed the Bantock hanging on the wall facing me. As I’d been intended to, of course. A Madonna and child. Or an old woman with a doll. It was hard to tell.
“What’s your opinion of Expressionism, Robin?”
“I’m really not qualified to—”
“We’re all qualified, surely. To judge whether something’s good or bad. Right or wrong. I’ve never been entirely sold on Oscar’s work myself.”
“Then why—”
“As an investment. Louise was the enthusiast. I trusted her taste. And it’s paid off. Though ironically only because Oscar’s dead. And Louise with him.”
“Sophie, I didn’t come here to—”
“Discuss art? No. I suppose not.” She jiggled the ice in her glass and took rather more than a sip. “Ah, I needed that.” She smiled. “The first taste is always the best, isn’t it? Of everything.”
“Why did you say what you did to Seymour?”
“You believe in coming to the point, don’t you? Is that what—Well, we’ll come back to that later, I expect.”
“Come back to what?” She was playing the same game with me she’d started in Sapperton. The same cat-and-mouse progression towards a meaning we never quite reached. And the resemblance to Louise was growing again. Or I was noticing it more. But perhaps resemblance wasn’t the right word. It was more an imitation. An expert re-creation of parts of her she knew I’d recognize. The soft voice. The toss of the head. The balancing on the brink.
“I was shocked to hear about Rowena. A young life snuffed out. So tragic. I always envied Louise her children, never having had any myself. But I suppose they bring as much grief as joy. How is Keith bearing up?”
“I haven’t seen him. Or Sarah. Or Paul.”
“Ah. Giving them a wide berth, are you? I quite understand. I thought I ought to do the same. In the circumstances.”
“I’ve spoken to Bella.”
“Of course. Your sister-in-law. Lady Paxton, I should say. Though the name doesn’t quite fit, does it?”
“She tells me they’re all extremely upset. As you’d expect. And they hold you and me to blame for what’s happened. As you’d also expect.”
“So we’re in the same boat, then.”
“In a sense.”
“Mmm.” She leant back and stared up thoughtfully at the ceiling. “In that case, why don’t you tell me why you cooperated with the charming Mr. Seymour.”
“To stop him harassing Rowena.”
“You think he meant to?”
“I don’t know. It was an effective lever of persuasion, though. And once he’d got me talking, he knew a li
ttle creative editing would do the rest.”
“That’s your cover story, is it?”
“It happens to be—”
“Come on, Robin. Nobody’s going to swallow it, least of all me. Neither of us thought Rowena would be so . . . drastic. So . . . extreme. It wasn’t our fault.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No. So let’s stop pretending we were set up by Seymour. Even the papers seem to have given up portraying him as the villain of the piece. We both knew exactly what we were doing. And why.”
“Maybe. But I doubt our reasons were the same.”
“Really? I’d have said they were identical. You’ve never believed the official account of Louise’s death. And you were hoping Seymour might be able to cast enough doubt on it to make others share your disbelief. So you decided to give him a little help. That’s all.”
“Are you saying . . . that’s why you . . .”
“Of course. If I’d known you thought the same way—”
“But I don’t. I don’t think the same way at all.”
“Yes you do. You must do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have given Seymour an interview.”
“No. You’re wrong. That’s not why I did it.”
She leant close to me across the arm of the sofa, lowering her voice as if to whisper a secret. “I’m glad we’re on the same side, Robin. I reckon we both need an ally. A friend we can turn to. I was very much afraid you were in on it. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to know you weren’t.”
“In on what?”
“I can see now I made too much of your . . . economy with the facts. But there was always a simpler explanation for that, wasn’t there? Some girlfriend you wanted to protect. Some fiancée, perhaps. Has she fallen by the wayside since? Is that why you’ve risked putting your head above the parapet?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do. But have it your own way. I don’t want to force you to admit anything.” She reached slowly out and traced a circle with her index finger on the back of my hand where it rested on the arm of the chair. “Or to do anything. Unless you want to. Unless we both want to.”