Guilt Edged

by Judith Cutler

  Would he indeed? I had to delete six or seven emails telling him what I thought of his idea. In the end I gave up and returned to the other tricky one. This took me about ten minutes and fifteen tries (by which time the in-box had got even fuller), and all I came up with was a really stupid message:

  Long time no hear. Worried. All well?

  XXX

  How about that for feeble? I messed around with things like missing you lots, and can’t wait to see you. Finally, I settled on Griff’s op a success – he’s making good progress, popping it between the question mark and the XXXs.

  There was nothing for it but to spend the rest of the morning tackling the rest of the in-box. I tried to ignore the irritating little voice observing that what I really wanted was to get any response from Morris as soon as it arrived, telling myself that since so much business was Internet-based, I needed to respond promptly to enquiries and orders. I still found that words required a lot of concentration, so when someone tapped on the office door I jumped out of my skin.

  ‘Mary thought you’d need a cuppa,’ Paul said, setting down a mug of green tea. After a few moments’ hesitation, he pulled up the spare chair and coughed.

  ‘Problem?’ I prompted.

  ‘Tell me to mind my own business if you want,’ he said, waiting. But since I said nothing he coughed again and said, ‘Tell me, Lina, does Griff have an accountant? And I’m not touting for business, since I don’t practise any more; I’m just asking.’

  ‘He’s got someone he sends all his receipts and bills to every autumn: is that what you mean?’

  He nodded, swallowed, and said nothing.

  People don’t just happen to ask about things like money, do they? Something was obviously worrying him. Had old Mr Westwood done a runner with all our money? I asked cautiously, ‘Is there some problem? Something that can’t wait till Griff gets home?’

  ‘It’s something that’s been worrying Mary, too.’

  Which didn’t seem to be an answer to anything. I raised an eyebrow.

  ‘We maybe should have mentioned it before Griff was taken ill. Before the op. But it seemed a bit … ghoulish. You see, we want to make sure you’re financially safe … him being so much older than … Of course, we hope he lives another twenty years. But you share both his business and his cottage. This leaves you very vulnerable, financially.’

  I took a deep breath. Half of me wanted to scream at him for his cheek; the other half wanted to hug him and Mary for worrying about me. So I took another breath and said, ‘We’ve made wills – both of us, actually – so we’re protected. Power of Attorney, too.’

  ‘Wonderful. But the taxman has ways of getting his hands on bequests. And local authorities pounce if anyone needs long term care that even the most loving family can’t provide. As I said, I just wonder … hope … but I daren’t tread on anyone’s professional toes.’ He risked a laugh, though it sounded very tight. ‘With your permission I would like to talk to Griff when he’s completely better. I wish I could talk to your father, too,’ he added with a big grin.

  Anyone trying to talk finances with Pa would end up feeling like a guest at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. ‘Don’t forget I’m what he always calls a bastard, Paul,’ I said firmly. ‘And I’ve got no more claim on him than any of his other children.’

  Paul raised an eyebrow. ‘Not according to what Griff says. He says you’re the only one that ever goes near the old bugger. Pardon my French.’

  ‘That’s probably the only sexual practice he’s never tried,’ I quipped – quoting Griff, as it happens. ‘Anyway, about Griff – I really don’t know.’ The deep breath hurt. ‘I can’t think about his dying, Paul, in case it somehow makes it happen.’

  ‘Doesn’t work like that, Lina. And we all have to die: you must know that, or you wouldn’t have bothered with a will yourself, would you?’

  ‘All the same …’

  ‘I’ll choose my moment, don’t you worry. And I promise it won’t be till the hospital has given him the all-clear. Now, Mary said she’d got enough lunch for the three of us, and since you’ll want to dash off to go to see Griff, would you like to join us in the shop for our picnic?’

  The words burst out. ‘Griff’s friend Aidan’s back – he says he doesn’t want me at the hospital this afternoon.’

  Paul said nothing for so long that I wondered whether he’d heard what I said. Finally, he asked, with almost no expression in his voice, ‘And how do you feel about that?’

  Behind my tears, I gave a bark of laughter. ‘That’s what my counsellor always used to ask when I was in a mess.’

  ‘I’m flattered! And you’d say to the counsellor?’

  ‘Cheeky bastard. Not you: Aidan, of course. I was so mad I didn’t reply. Here.’ I brought it up on the screen and pointed.

  ‘He might actually mean it – that you could do with the afternoon off.’ He pointed at yet more unread messages. ‘To read those for a start.’

  Squashing the thought that maybe he was actually too jet-lagged to phrase things more subtly, I said, ‘He could have asked, not told.’

  He nodded. ‘Quite. So zero marks for tact. Has he known Griff long?’

  He was nudging me into a kinder stance, wasn’t he? ‘For ever. And I know in his position I’d want to see Griff straight away, without an audience. But I … What if the shock kills Griff?’ I blurted.

  ‘Come on, Lina, he’ll be on so many drugs at the moment I don’t suppose he’ll even be able to raise an eyebrow. But you could phone Aidan and tell him you want to go along yourself just to warn Griff – that would make sense. And you know what, after your gallivanting round France and all that stuff happening to you last weekend, I think taking time off from dashing to Ashford wouldn’t be a bad idea. Tell Aidan you can alternate. Better than both of you sitting beside Griff’s bed competing for his attention – now that wouldn’t do him any good at all.’

  I nodded. ‘I’ll text him. And then I’ll be down for our picnic.’

  SIX

  ‘I told you that there was no need for you to visit Griff this afternoon,’ Aidan said tartly as he locked his car, coincidentally parked next to mine.

  I wanted to yell at him that he had no right to tell me anything. But his weeks in New Zealand had transformed him from his usual sleek, debonair and possibly pampered self to a weary and battered old man. I knew that such an ordeal would have aged anyone. All the same, without raising my voice, or at least not very much, I said, ‘As I said in my text, I’m anxious that the shock of seeing anyone he didn’t expect wouldn’t be good for Griff. I know how you feel, Aidan—’

  ‘Indeed you do not!’ Not just blazing eyes but a jab of his index finger, too.

  Just as I’d started to feel sorry for him! ‘Well, I know how I feel. And I just want to protect Griff.’

  ‘I hardly think your concern is necessary.’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t. Maybe I’m just stressed out of my mind and I’m being totally unreasonable. Look, give me just five minutes with him, since I can’t bear not seeing him at all today, and then he’s all yours for both visiting sessions. And then we should work out a visiting rota.’

  ‘When’s he being discharged? I need to book nursing staff.’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him. But he may want to come home to the cottage,’ I pointed out. ‘First of all, at least.’ I willed a smile into place. ‘I’m sure you’re already working out some lovely place to take him to convalesce,’ I added as he went puce with fury. ‘Calm down, Aidan, or you’ll end up in the next bed to him,’ I said flippantly.

  Then I realized there were tears in his eyes. Anger? Frustration? Love? I understood all three. ‘Just go,’ I said quietly. ‘I’ll see him for a couple of minutes at the end.’ Retreating to the car, I couldn’t stop the tears – hell, more of them! Hadn’t I shed enough? – and even more annoyingly I couldn’t work out what they were for.

  Then a text arrived. A text? I was ready to tell it to wait till I saw it was from Ai
dan. They wouldn’t let him in since he wasn’t a relative. The buggers! I was halfway across the car park before I drew breath.

  So in the end I’d done it my way, having informed the jobsworth trying to exclude Aidan that if anyone would make Griff better it was his oldest, dearest friend, who would be sharing the visiting with me, starting with now and continuing this evening. My success wouldn’t endear me to Aidan, of course: he was the sort of man who liked to make things happen, not to have to wait for others to wave magic wands. But I’d bounced in to see Griff, hugged him – no tubes at all today! – and told him I was on my way because someone else was waiting to see him. He knew at once, of course – and I’d rather I hadn’t seen his face light up.

  So when out of the blue I had a phone call from Tristam – he must have got my number from Brian, I suppose – asking me if I fancied a drink, maybe a club afterwards, that evening, I responded saying a drink and some food would suit me better. I added that since he was trade and he could tell me about pictures, I could put him on expenses. I didn’t really think I could, but at least I was earning. He didn’t strike me as the sort of person who’d otherwise want to be paid for, on what he might (or, of course, might not) have meant as a date. If I felt a bit iffy about that, on account of my still officially being with Morris and not being sure if I even liked Tristam, then I spun myself the same tale – I’d be learning about pictures.

  Tris could eat for England. We’d agreed to meet in the village pub, since I could safely and easily walk there and back and wouldn’t have to worry about my alcohol intake – or be dependent on someone I hardly knew for a lift. Altogether safer. He had the pub’s double burger in a bap and chips, while I managed the standard burger without bread and with salad, just as Griff had trained me to do. Oh, and chips, of course, but half of them ended up down Tristam’s throat. As did a lot of beer.

  None of this stopped him talking – mostly, of course, about himself. As the bar got fuller and noisier with Friday night boozers, mostly kids wearing the same sort of rugby shirt as him, I reasoned it was a good job he’d acquired that carrying public school tone or I’d hardly have heard him. No one else seemed to be listening, so I carried on as his audience. Mother running this company, father running that. Prep school the name of which I didn’t recognize, which seemed to surprise him, and public school I did. And, of course, Reading University. I made a silly quip that he should have gone to St Andrews, to hobnob with Will and Kate, but apart from registering I knew that other places did Fine Arts degrees, he didn’t make much of my joke. For quite some time I was tempted to drop into the conversation something about my father being a lord, because it would have been nice to see his face. But I couldn’t be bothered.

  Suddenly, however, he changed gear, and started asking about me and my past – questions I always responded to in the most general of terms. I didn’t want to be pitied or patronized. Fast-forwarding to my life with Griff, I talked about an apprenticeship (why on earth didn’t I have the sense to call it an internship?) to teach me my restoration skills – almost true, since I was taught by two old friends of Griff’s. When he asked for whom I’d undertaken freelance work since then I was truthful: it was nice to see his eyebrows go rocketing up. But there was no way I was going to give him a demonstration of my divvying skills, which he edged towards. At last we got on to what most interested me – and, to do him justice, him: what he called representational art and I called pictures.

  ‘Do you paint yourself?’

  He pulled a face. ‘Sunday painter,’ he mumbled. ‘No future in it, of course. No present, either, to be honest. I just don’t have that – that edge.’ He sighed, almost painfully. ‘I’d have liked to do some postgrad research but you’ve no idea how much that costs … So the best option was this auction house thing. And I even do that for free,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Presumably your parents can support you? Regard what you’re doing as an investment?’ I prompted, rather pleased with the term.

  ‘Things aren’t too good on the business front, in case you haven’t noticed,’ he said, necking the last of his beer. Waving away my offer of another, he leant across the table. ‘These horses of yours. What’s your problem with them? Isn’t it a case of caveat emptor? I mean, used, old, second-hand – no one expects them to be perfect.’

  ‘I think,’ I said, trying to sound judicious, not pompous, ‘there’s a difference between my buying a horse because I like it and my buying a horse because someone tells me it’s valuable. And by painting the horse white, you’re certainly implying it’s valuable, even if you don’t actually use words. In other words, you’re not being honest.’

  ‘But who’s honest in this life? And aren’t all values relative? I mean, take a Cézanne being sold for enough money to refloat the Greek economy. Is it worth it?’

  I had an idea you needed a university education to be able to discuss such things seriously. ‘Isn’t there a difference,’ I ventured, ‘between a fake and something simply overpriced? I admit they’re both a sort of robbery …’

  ‘Some fakers’ work is now worth thousands in its own right,’ he said, going off at what seemed to be yet another tangent. Then he lurched back. ‘Tell me, if you had a row of white horses, would you be able to tell which was kosher and which was dodgy? With this nose of yours?’ He touched it lightly and smiled the sort of smile that would have had ducks flocking off the water.

  I responded in kind, my head slightly to one side. ‘How would I know? Line them up and I’ll see.’

  ‘How about if I lined them up and blindfolded you?’

  There had been times, though I wasn’t telling him (or anyone else, for that matter) about them, that I’d simply known – without any logic – that I had to go to a certain stall at a fair and I’d find something there. It was time for a mild counter-attack. ‘As I said, line them up and I’ll see. And line up some Isaac Olivers and School of Isaac Olivers too. I’d love to know how you tell them apart. Properly, I mean. Not just with my funny instinct.’

  Before he could say anything, one of the loud crowd at the bar lurched our way. It seemed they’d known each other from school, and the newcomer wasn’t going to let the small matter of Tris’s being with me stand in the way of a long and liquid reunion. In fact it suited me fine to settle up at the bar and slide out.

  Although I’d have preferred a bit of street-lighting (one of the parish councillors was an astronomer and vetoed every attempt to pollute his night sky) I didn’t turn a hair about walking home alone. Bredeham was a village, for heaven’s sake, where everyone looked out for everyone else. Someone walking behind me was just taking the same route. That was all.

  So I crossed over the road, just to see what he’d do. He crossed too.

  Maybe he wasn’t simply taking the same route.

  Time for a Plan B. I’d got a torch which would double in an emergency as a cosh. I’d learned to fight without any rules at all. I’d even learned to run like hell and get away from trouble. The cottage itself would be as secure as Fort Knox.

  Tim the Bear would be waiting; Aidan would have left a message reporting back on Griff; and there was nothing in the world to keep me from a good night’s sleep.

  But it would take time to open up. And someone the size of the guy following me might just be able to push his way in after me. I did the obvious thing: adopted Plan C.

  Which involved Afzal and his mates at the takeaway. As soon as they heard about my problem, they gathered round me protectively, making it quite clear to any observer that I wasn’t alone and unprotected; if that message didn’t go home, Ahmed, Afzal’s fast-bowler cousin, and another guy I’d never met, went outside and stared meaningfully around. Meaningfully and actually quite threateningly. To my great shame and embarrassment, the only person in sight was a woman, heading briskly towards the car park. All the same, the lads insisted I had a lift home with the next food delivery. This involved a nice bit of banter about cricket and a highly circuitous route. Just beca
use we were enjoying ourselves.

  But someone was in the cottage. Ahmed and I shared a rapid intake of breath.

  Whoever it was wasn’t furtive, surely wasn’t a-burgling. Not with all the lights ablaze in Griff’s bedroom and now in mine. It looked as if the TV set in the living room was on. My mind went blank. Could it possibly, possibly be that they’d sent Griff home already? A tiny corner of my mind congratulated myself on having totally stripped and remade his bed, so it was hospital clean. He’d be safe with me.

  It wasn’t Griff. Of course it wasn’t. Not with that car parked outside.

  It was Morris!

  Telling Ahmed everything was fine, and not to bother with the baseball bat he kept handy, I hopped out and ran to the door, waving and letting myself in.

  Yes, it was Morris, all right, and, judging by the howls and sobs from upstairs, Leda, his little daughter. His wife’s daughter, at least. There was also an inescapable smell. Someone had thrown up.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ he greeted me, emerging from the kitchen with a glass of water.

  ‘Out. What’s the matter with Leda?’ I was already heading upstairs.

  ‘I thought she was over the bug, but it seems she isn’t. So where were you?’ He followed me. ‘I phoned you, texted you – why didn’t you respond?

  Because – I don’t know why I’d switched my phone off. I said nothing.

  The howls were coming from my room. At least it was my bedclothes she’d been sick all over. So why was there a pile of bedlinen on the floor in Griff’s room?

  ‘Look who’s here, sweetheart! It’s Lina!’ he called, in the soppy but desperate voice of a man who didn’t know what to do next.

  Leda showed her feelings about me pretty clearly. She threw up again – was this what they called projectile vomiting? – all over my duvet. And all over Tim the Bear.

  I grabbed him. Leda howled more loudly. Morris yelled and tried to grab him back. I know I screamed. I flung words at him I’d not used since Griff had rescued me. I wasn’t proud of them – I knew a sick toddler was more important than a sicked-on bear – but I was beyond reason.