‘I didn’t know we had one of those,’ he said aloud.
From the door, Stella said: ‘We don’t. One of Max’s assistants from the restaurant comes round to do it, this is chicken and ham.’
‘Smells like it.’
‘It’s a very good new service that Max is thinking of starting up. Kind of luxury meals on wheels. You can choose from three menus and Max says they will change from week to week, according to what is in season.’
‘How long has it been going?’ asked Coffin suspiciously.
‘Just started, we are the first to use it. Max suggested it to me. If it’s a success, he will build it up.’
‘We are an experiment then. He’s trying it out on us.’ Coffin liked Max and appreciated his food, but he also saw that Max aimed his arrows at Stella. Celebrated, fashionable, much-photographed Stella who brought in the smart customers.
‘Well, you know Max, he’s very adventurous.’
Some years ago now, when Coffin had first come to live in St Luke’s and Stella had only just started the theatre in the old church, before they were married, in fact. Max had opened his first eating place. He and his daughters, the Beauty one and the Clever one and the Married one, had run it between them. Since then he had prospered and taken on the catering in the theatre. Max’s restaurant was now a smart place to eat in the Second City, which was not famous for good food.
‘He ought to pay us,’ he protested.
‘This meal is a present,’ said Stella, showing that she too had a business head. She had learnt a lot from Coffin’s half-sister, Letty, who always knew where a bargain was to be negotiated. She was at present in Hong Kong, where she was doing business. Letty was a backer of the theatre, for which Stella was grateful. She was expected back in London soon, which gave Stella another reason for gratitude since the season was not doing too well and she was pressed financially; Letty would see her through, she hoped.
She was fussing round the kitchen, opening cupboard doors and then closing them again. ‘Oh, you’ve fed the animals.’
Coffin said he had.
‘What sort of a day?’ she asked.
‘Oh, this and that. What about you?’
‘Trouble with Twelfth Night. Martin came in with a black eye, nothing much, just a mark under one eye, but someone gave it to him – the love of his life, I suppose – and a bruise right down the side of his face. That wouldn’t matter, make-up could deal with it, but his wits seem to have gone too. The rehearsal was bad, very bad, and mostly due to Malvolio – the part is quite as crucial as Sir Toby, you know, and he buggered the whole thing up … I don’t think I can get away tomorrow. Must stay around and steady their nerves.’
‘You’re not directing though?’
‘No, I brought Archie Tree in for three productions of which this is the first. It’s his nerves I must steady.’
‘Won’t it be a pity not to see the boy in Edinburgh or wherever?’ asked Coffin, thinking of his dinner with Phoebe.
‘St Andrews … no, I’ve seen a tape he sent me, and I saw him at Chichester in a Pinter play. I’ll get him, I think. He’s not a name.’ So she would get him cheap. He would be a name, and she would have got in early, and that was all to the good. ‘You know, I’m beginning to wish you hadn’t got into this weird hunt for a dead woman. There’s something odd about it. I don’t like it.’
‘I feel the same, but I think I have to do it. Not in person – I’ve put Phoebe Astley in charge.’
‘Oh.’
‘She’s good,’ said Coffin defensively.
‘I wish she dressed better, but among all you men it’s probably as well not to.’
‘We’re not that bad.’
‘Yes, you are, a lot of chauvinist pigs.’ Stella had had a role recently in a police series on TV and said she had learnt a lot, not from her fellow performers but from the police expert checking the show.
‘It’s not all like television,’ protested her husband. ‘I’m changing things. Anyway, Phoebe dresses to suit herself.’
Beneath the words they were throwing at each other there was amusement and affection. It was an argument, not even a discussion, they were enjoying each other’s company.
One of your better moments. Coffin decided as he got out a bottle of wine.
They ate the casserole in companionable ease at the kitchen table.
They had finished when the bell rang below.
‘I’m not going to look out of the window,’ said Stella, covering her eyes, although she knew that she could not see their front door from the kitchen, ‘but something tells me that it is Martin.’
‘I’m afraid you are right,’ said Coffin, going over to the window. ‘He is invisible … although still ringing the bell … but there is the old bike you say he goes about on propped up against the wall.’ He looked at the TV viewer fixed on his porch as a security aid. Yes, there was Martin; no one was really invisible.
He went down the stairs.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Martin, as he came into the kitchen. ‘I came to apologize for my behaviour today.’ The bruise under his left eye was a dark evil streak, while on the other side of his face a long bruise stretched from cheekbone to jaw. He looked pale and thin.
‘Sit down and have a glass of wine.’
‘I let you all down, one of my worst goes, but I’ll –’ he stopped.
‘You’ll be all right on the night?’ supplied Stella. She said it with some humour, but with intent. Then she went on, more gently: ‘We all have emotional crises, performers more than most. Maybe they power the machine, I don’t know, but your best work has to come through, or you are nothing.’
‘Discipline,’ said Martin, as if he had heard that word before in his life.
‘Discipline – stay with us and you will get it.’
‘I can’t always control what I do, I have to admit it.’
‘All performers have a devil inside them,’ said Stella, ‘or they wouldn’t be what they are or be able to act. You have to have something strong and hard pushing you forward or you wouldn’t stay in a tough, competitive craft. No easy answers for actors, Martin, and it never gets easier. If you win any laurels you can’t rest on them, they turn into thorns and prickles. You might not win any laurels, probably will not, most of us don’t, but you won’t give up. The devil inside will see you don’t.’
Except professionally and when speaking the author’s lines. Coffin had never heard such a long speech from his wife. He got up and refilled her glass.
‘Jaimie has got her own devil too, and that makes things difficult. I admire her very much, she has such tenacity when she follows up a story, she’s a good writer, too, but when she gets aggressive so do I. Or the other way round, either one of us can start it. Last night it was her fault, I think, but I did my bit.’
‘Go round and make it up with … flowers, a book, chocolates,’ suggested Coffin, anxious for the lad to finish talking and go away.
Martin was silent. ‘I don’t think she’s there, not in our flat. I went round to look and it’s empty. She’s gone.’
‘Left, you mean? Taken all her things with her.’
‘No, not that I could see.’
‘She’ll be back,’ said Stella.
‘Yes, you are right, of course. She’s working, I expect, she’s very keen on one story she has in hand …’
‘Does she have more than one?’ asked Coffin.
‘I think so,’ Martin said slowly. ‘She hasn’t said much but she’s been using the libraries a good deal, looking at old newspapers.’ He looked at Stella. ‘I think she also just might be doing a bit of research on me and my sister … I don’t know how you would feel about that, Stella … Publicity, I mean, perhaps bad publicity.’
‘Oh, no publicity is bad,’ said Stella, rising to her feet. She too felt a hint might not be a bad idea. ‘I wouldn’t mind. It’s past. Your past. But can’t you ask her to leave it?’
‘You don’t ask Jaimie,’ said Martin
. ‘She wouldn’t take interference in her work. Anyway, I’m not sure. I may be imagining it and it’s the other story that is what she is really keen on.’
He too had risen. ‘Thanks for letting me talk. I won’t let you down, Stella.’
‘Better not.’
She walked down the staircase with him, halfway down they were joined by Tiddles, who stood waiting by the front door, ready to depart.
‘She’s got another place,’ said Martin, as he stepped through the door, ‘a little flat near the Tower, a workplace; she’s probably there. I’ll take a look.’
Stella marched up the stairs, talking as she went. ‘Let’s have some coffee … What a pig that girl must be, if she’s really going to exploit Martin and his sister. He loves her.’
‘It seems a very explosive relationship.’ Coffin came down the stairs and they met by the kitchen door. ‘He’s had a fight, you know, those were real bruises.’
Stella was tolerant. ‘The young are like that. Didn’t you ever have a fight when you were young?’ She was already measuring the coffee into the pot and wondering why Max had not sent a Thermos of his own coffee. The cat had decided not to leave but to return to the source of food which smelt pleasantly tasty to him.
‘Only when I was working,’ said Coffin. ‘And not with a woman.’
Stella paused with the coffee pot in her hand. ‘I did once, threw a bottle at my producer … hit him right on the nose.’
‘Did it break?’
‘The bottle did, not the nose. He had a nose like Cyrano de Bergerac, that one. The bottle had red wine in it, ruined his suit.’
‘You could have killed him,’ said Coffin, accepting the cup she held out.
‘Not that one, he’s alive to this day, one of my best friends …’ She looked at Coffin and laughed.
‘I think you are making it all up.’
‘Perhaps a bit.’
‘And all that stuff to Martin. About performers having the devil inside them. Did you mean it?’
‘Half and half,’ she said. ‘We do show off a bit, but I was really trying to cheer him up. All the same, we aren’t easy people.’
Rogues and vagabonds once, outcasts, if not working in a company, thought Coffin, looking at her lovingly, not easy people.
‘In any case, I think it is another history that engages her more.’
Stella raised an eyebrow.
‘Yes, I think she must be the young woman journalist who is researching Dick Lavender. If she is, then Phoebe Astley will be following in her footsteps.’
‘Let’s hope they don’t collide.’
‘Phoebe’s not a bad sort,’ said Coffin, going to his window to look out at the old churchyard. ‘I suppose we had better dig it up over there. Just to take a look. As asked.’
He had a sudden picture of a dark night, with little street-lighting and no moon, when a boy and his mother pushed a dead woman through the streets to bury her in hallowed ground.
The past touched him with a cold hand.
Martin took the Dockland Light Railway out to near the Tower of London, then walked to where Jaimie had her little workplace.
She had the top flat above a flower shop. The shop was closed but the staircase at the right had a bell and an entryphone.
He pressed the bell. M. Flower, the name card said. It was one of her working names. He had no idea which, if any, really were hers. Probably there was yet another identity out in Berkshire or Surrey which was the real Jaimie. She said that investigative journalists needed pseudonyms. He wished he had brought his key, but he had thrown it at her in their last fight.
Always at the back of his mind was the memory of how they had met. He had been wandering round the public library near his rooms; he was new in the Second City and knew no one much except his fellow performers, and Stella Pinero. There was always his sister, but he was chary of bothering her, he was never sure she wanted to be reminded of him. So he was lonely and read a lot. The John Evelyn Library was a very good one, one of those libraries that the Scottish industrialist Andrew Carnegie had founded with money made in the steel mills of Pennsylvania.
The building itself was an old manor house, early seventeenth century, modified inside but still beautiful. A little parkland remained around it. Jaimie had picked him up in the Reading Room there where he was reading The Times. He realized she had made a set at him but he was young enough and sufficiently aware of his good looks to know his own attractions. Jaimie was so pretty, so intelligent (an Oxford graduate, child of stuffy parents in Berkshire – not in favour of education, she had said, so she did not see them often now – who made her own way in the world), so sexy, that their affair began at once.
It seemed all so spontaneous and natural that he never questioned it, never wondered how much of it was lies, but now he asked himself if she hadn’t sought him out on purpose to get her story. She was going to write him up, and Clara as well.
Cold, scheming bitch, he thought. But he loved her. Or had loved her. How much could love survive?
‘Jaimie,’ he called. ‘Jaimie, can I come up?’
There was no answer. He had expected none, he knew he was like a child, calling through the letter box of an empty house.
It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down.
Emily Dickinson, 1830–1886
4
As November the fifth approached, figures of Guy Fawkes began to appear on the streets. The shopping centre in Spinnergate was particularly well provided with small groups who had put together a guy, dressed in borrowed clothes, and propped up in a pushchair or an old pram, if they could find one, or if not sitting up in a cart made from a wooden box with wheels. Some guys looked smarter than others.
Jimmy Barlow and Tom Fisher were aided by Tom’s sister, who was ignored by the boys and apparently nameless. Occasionally she would mutter to herself: I do have a name, I am Louise. Every so often she spoke, but she usually got no answer.
The trio were standing at the corner of Edward Street, which was not far away from their school, and led to Fisher Street, a row of shops with several large stores. Not far away was a car park. They had chosen this site on purpose, chasing away at least two rival Guy Fawkes shows.
Louise said: ‘Watch your pockets, boys, crime corner, this is.’ She was walking up and down, shouting out to remember the guy, remember the guy.
‘Tell her to go home,’ Jimmy muttered to Tom. ‘Better without her. It’s getting late.’ It was a dark November evening.
‘She won’t go. She knows we have permission to stay out late, that’s when the money is good, and we are collecting for charity.’ Sort of, he added honestly to himself.
Louise said loudly: ‘I want to stay. I am going to stay. It’s quite safe, the police station is just round the corner.’ She moved forward down the street and rattled the box she was carrying. ‘Remember the guy, please, remember the guy.’
A woman who was coming out of Boots the Chemists tried to pass her, but Louise waved the box and called out again: ‘Please remember the guy.’
‘Here you are then,’ said the woman, dropping a silver coin into her box. After all, she had pushed a guy around herself as a child. She looked at the guy. ‘Not bad. Did you make it?’
‘Helped,’ said Louise. She hopped back to the two boys. ‘There you are, I am collecting better than you are.’ She rattled her box.
The woman who had made her donation to Louise turned back; she said: ‘Is that your guy too, the one in the car park?’
‘No, Mrs,’ said Tom.
‘Someone has left one there. Been there all the morning. Might have come last night.’
‘Someone has lost it,’ said Tom.
‘Is that likely? Dumped, yes, lost, no. You don’t lose a guy. I have been young myself.’
‘I will go and have a look,’ said Tom. They could have two guys and Louise could have one all to herself. Lucky Louise.
His sister was there before him.
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The guy was in a big box, propped up against the fence of the car park. He was wearing a big hat, very old and battered, made of black felt, underneath was fixed one of the usual Guy Fawkes masks, this one looked particularly unpleasant because it had shifted sideways slightly. A jacket covered the top of the body, and the hands wore gloves which rested on an old blanket. You could just see the tip of a shoe.
Louise went up to look, she walked round the back, pulling the guy away from the wall. ‘Jolly heavy.’
Then she screamed.
5
Coffin and Phoebe Astley had their dinner together as arranged. The table in the corner of the big room (Max had expanded over the last two years, creating two rooms where the kitchens had once been, separated by an arch) was the one where you could observe all, be seen yourself if you so desired – although there was a row of little shrubs in brown pots that could be dragged forward to shield you – and yet not be overheard.
If the Chief Commander had known that the performers in the Stella Pinero Theatre, and picking it up from them, his own officers, called it Lovers’ Corner, he would have avoided it. In unusual innocence, he thought of it as a private spot to talk. He was often there with Stella but not tonight. After a difficult day full of dull routine and irritating interviews, he would have been glad to see her, but she had decided, after all, to fly to Scotland to interview the young actor in whom she was interested.
Phoebe had got to Max’s before him, studying the notes she had made.
‘I started with two lives of him written about the time he retired from office. He lost an election and bowed out. Both the books are lightweight: The Lavender Years and Life of a Prime Minister. He didn’t like the boring official life, apparently.’
‘Not then.’ Coffin poured her some wine. ‘He does now. Or anyway, one over which he has control.’
‘Yes, that side of him comes across: he had to be in charge. I got the books from the local library. You know it, I expect, the John Evelyn? I haven’t used it much, but I knew the librarian, she belongs to my Women’s Group –’
A Double Coffin Page 6
