Criminals

by Margot Livesey

  “Are you working on anything special?”

  “Just the usual frantic boredom—chasing clients, going to meetings, faxing, phoning, discussing interest rates, trying to float companies. The trouble with doing business internationally is that someone, somewhere, is always awake and wanting something from you. Right now I’m fussing over an Italian company.”

  “Fussing?”

  “Yes. The deal was all arranged, and then one of the major investors got cold feet. I’ll probably have to go to Milan next week.” He hesitated. “And there’s, well, some kind of row …” He was frowning at the stone floor, and it was several seconds before he met Mollie’s gaze. “Sorry,” he said, forcing a smile. “I keep telling myself I’ll retire when I’m forty-five and do something sensible.”

  “What could be more sensible than banking?”

  “Working for Oxfam? Teaching? Translating masterpieces from the Sanskrit?”

  “I didn’t know you knew anything about Sanskrit. Down, Sadie.” The collie had stationed herself beneath the table and was snuffling for scraps.

  “I don’t, yet. It’s just an example of what I might be interested in, if I didn’t work sixteen hours a day.”

  “And what about a family?” She picked up another potato.

  “I have that: you, Bridget, Aunt Hester, and Uncle Godfrey. You’re already enough trouble.” He gave her a quick look, to see if it was all right to tease.

  Mollie felt the power of hysteria. Ewan hated displays of emotion, other people’s and his own, whereas she had always been ready to abandon the small boat of reason for the vast sea of feeling. She could persuade him to do whatever she wanted, Mollie thought, just by hinting she was about to shout or weep. “Ewan, you’re being a prig. I mean girlfriends, sex. The only girl you ever brought to see us was Michelle. I remember she arrived wearing a beautiful white silk blouse. We were being macrobiotic and Daniel had just gotten his drum set and she hated the country.”

  “That was a disaster, start to finish. We argued the whole way back to London. Later there was a certain meagre consolation in being able to tell myself she’d bolted because of my mad family and their passion for brown rice.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mollie said. “We were relentless. But there must be other people. At university several of my friends fancied you. Remember Charlotte? She kept begging me to bring you together. And I did, about twenty times, with zero results. She said you once kissed her cheek.”

  Ewan grinned. “She should’ve been thrilled. Cheek kissing was absolutely my outer limit in those days. Whatever became of her?”

  “She moved to Malvern. Her husband works for a water company, those nice bottles we all drink. I haven’t heard from her in years. But seriously—aren’t women beating a trail to your door?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Women have better things to do these days than beat a trail to anyone’s door.”

  Mollie looked up from the chopping board, surprised at his sudden crossness. She was about to ask what was the matter, but Ewan again turned the conversation back to the baby, hoisting her into the air and asking when such creatures started to crawl.

  “Eight months? Ten?” Mollie tried to recall the age at which Lorraine’s youngest daughter had started circling the kitchen. “She’s probably due for another bottle. You can give it to her.”

  “I’m not sure I know how. You seem awfully well informed about babies. Weren’t Daniel and Rebecca already at school by the time you met Chae?”

  “Daniel was. He was six, and Rebecca started a year later. I wish I had known them when they were babies. I think we’d be much closer, but Chae says that’s rubbish.”

  “Ah yes, Chae.”

  He let the name hang there, a ripe fruit waiting to be plucked. Not yet, Mollie almost whispered. She carried over a bottle and hovered longingly while Ewan struggled to manoeuvre the nipple into the baby’s eager mouth. Then she made herself lay the table. As she set out the knives and forks, she thought, If the universe is full of lost objects and we each attract to ourselves the ones we need, Ewan must be among the least likely candidates to find a baby; it didn’t even occur to him she was hungry. No, she corrected herself, as she folded the napkins. Wasn’t he, in many ways, the best finder a baby could hope for? Honest, decent. And kind, she added penitently. He had attracted the baby out of the universe not for himself but for her.

  Before the bottle was empty, the baby stopped sucking and turned her face away; she was asleep. Mollie took her from Ewan and put her back in the armchair. “Time for the grownups to eat,” she said.

  She served the food and Ewan poured a good burgundy he’d brought from London. Mollie had drunk no alcohol since the night Chae left, when she vaguely remembered a bottle of gin. Now she was delighted by the rich, smoky fragrance of the wine. She and Ewan clinked glasses, a little shyly, and he asked what she was weaving.

  “Hangings,” she said. “At least I was. Part of what I always liked about weaving was that I didn’t need to shut myself away to do it; I could enjoy company.” She took a mouthful of pheasant and was relieved to find it tender. “The trouble is, without any interruptions, I can’t concentrate. Throwing a shuttle is both too finicky and too monotonous to do alone. Besides, I was in the middle of a present for Rebecca.”

  “This is d-d-d-d-”

  As she waited, Mollie realised she had almost forgotten Ewan’s stutter; it surfaced so seldom nowadays. When they were children it had been the sole thing about which she and Bridget were absolutely forbidden to tease him. After a few seconds he abandoned the struggle with “delicious.” “Very good,” he said, nodding towards his plate.

  They talked about Bridget, her latest letter from Boston, and about Ewan’s colleague Jack, who was becoming a daytime drunk. “Goodness knows,” Ewan said, “I’m not one to complain about someone having a drink—whatever dulls the misery—but the other day he got so tipsy at lunch he called a client by the wrong name and couldn’t figure out the exchange rate in dollars.”

  “Poor chap,” said Mollie dryly. She could feel them inching up on the subject of her own misery, and wasn’t that after all why she had summoned Ewan? She recalled saying on the phone, more than once, “I must talk to you.” But now she saw that a large part of what she wanted was the mere act of his coming. She had needed to know there was one person in the world who would come if she asked. And he had. That it had been difficult, that his life was stuffed with appointments, only increased the value of the gesture. As soon as he’d agreed, she’d been able to leave the house again, say good morning and thank you, wave to the Youngs’ children.

  “So,” said Ewan. “You were pretty fed up on the phone.”

  Mollie chewed, swallowed, sipped her wine. She had a terrible desire to go and pick up the baby. But instead she had to sit here and keep Ewan distracted. “Yes, I was fed up. I am.”

  “But what happened? It’s only a few months since I got your glowing Christmas card. Did you have an argument?”

  “You could call it that,” she said, offering the words grudgingly, one by one.

  “Did he leave the top off the toothpaste, or meet someone else? After all, you two have been together for over ten years. He can’t just disappear. And what about the children?”

  Mollie pushed back her chair and replied to the easiest of his questions. “The children aren’t children anymore. Daniel’s sixteen and Rebecca’s nearly fifteen, and they’d both reached the stage when they hated coming here. I don’t blame them. All their friends are in Edinburgh. Why should they spend their holidays going for walks and playing Scrabble? Last Christmas they only stayed for a week, under huge duress.”

  “Still,” Ewan said, “I can’t believe that’s any reason for you and Chae to separate. People change—you both changed. There are bound to be problems, but that doesn’t mean it has to end.” He laughed and shook his head. “Sorry, I’m sounding like a woman’s magazine.”

  His laugh faded and he, too, edged his chair back from
the table. For a moment he seemed absorbed in adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. Mollie watched him unobserved. His gold-framed glasses glinted, and he must have shaved after his bath, because along the jaw his skin shone. He reminded her of someone and, as he twitched his left cuff link, Mollie realised who. In the months since she’d last laid eyes on him, her little brother had developed a remarkable resemblance to their father before his first heart attack.

  He looked up with an earnest expression. “I want you to know,” he said, “I’ll help however I can. I thought you might come and stay with me. You can have the top floor, your own phone, plenty of privacy. You don’t have to say anything now. The house is there when you want it, for as long as you like. I brought you a set of keys. And money, whatever you need.”

  Mollie could not speak. Jesus, what an idiotic reason to cry. She fixed her gaze on Plato, trying to lose herself in the blueness of his wings. The day after Chae left, she forgot to close the door of his cage, and he had blundered, clumsy and panic-stricken, from shelf to windowsill to lamp, while she pursued him, calling his name, terrified. When he flew into the window for the second time, she saw the mistake in her strategy. She fetched his birdseed, sprinkled it noisily on the floor of his cage, and sat down at the table to wait. Since then her fear of the black birds had begun, and she sometimes had qualms even about Plato. Now he kept his head tucked under his wing, oblivious. His blueness did not help.

  But Ewan came to her aid. “Do you still have the sheep?” he asked. “I didn’t notice them as we came in. Is there any more to eat?”

  “Yes, of course, there’s seconds of everything.” Mollie jumped up and came round the table to get his plate, which gave her an excuse to see the baby. She bent down, putting her face close to that tiny one. A small breath wafted over her. There; she felt better. She filled Ewan’s plate and set it before him. Then she fetched her own and helped herself to another slice of pheasant, a potato, and a spoonful of leeks.

  He asked again about the sheep. “We had to get rid of them,” she said. “Miss Havisham was a terrific bully. Always throwing her weight around. And Pip and Estella were boring. They just bleated and ate. Not that you can expect much of a sheep. But if they’d been nicer, we might have made more of an effort to hang on to them.”

  “I thought you kept them for the wool.”

  “We pretended to. Really, it was absurd. If you’d seen the accounts, if we’d kept accounts, you’d have torn your hair out.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have enough for that sort of gesture.” He fingered his flimsy brown hair.

  Mollie smiled and, picking up her glass again, drank determinedly. “What we were doing here,” she continued, “I know it didn’t make much sense to you, but it was an attempt to lead a correct life, a life consistent with the late twentieth century, dwindling resources, all of that. And we hit a wall. We couldn’t grow enough food to be self-sufficient. We couldn’t make enough money. Daniel and Rebecca weren’t utopian children. Eventually, even to us, it became apparent we simply couldn’t afford to go on. Our wool cost twice as much as in the shops. Our apples three times. The first few years we kept saying, Oh, it’s part of the initial investment. But it wasn’t true. If you do things on a small scale—four sheep, half a dozen hens, a small garden—the amount of time and money you expend is totally out of proportion. Those six hens cost a fortune to keep, and then they’re eaten by foxes because you go out to supper and the children forget to shut them in for the night.”

  She stopped, taken aback by her own shrill tones.

  Ewan was cutting up the last of his pheasant, nodding thoughtfully. “I wonder why?” he said. “After all, there used to be smallholders—two acres and a cow, or whatever. Somehow people managed. Maybe it’s one of those situations where costs have mysteriously shifted. I remember Aunt Hester talking about the early days of their marriage; she and Godfrey had a servant the way you have a dishwasher.”

  “Yes,” said Mollie. “Maybe it is shifting costs, but we felt like fools. It made this whole thing, this life we’d slaved over, into a joke.”

  “Is that why we’re eating pheasant?” asked Ewan. “You practically threw me out once for bringing you a pâté from Harrods.”

  “That’s exactly why. I’m tired of living a life of principle. Besides, I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  Soon they could respectably declare bedtime. Mollie let Sadie out for a last run. Together they stacked the dishes by the sink. Ewan ran himself a glass of water and bent to kiss her cheek. “Good night.”

  He was almost at the door when he stopped. “Oh, what about the baby? Will we hear her down here?”

  “I’ll take her to my room,” Mollie said, trying to sound as if this were a hardship.

  “Good,” murmured Ewan. “I hope she’s no trouble.”

  Chapter 3

  Ewan adjusted his pillows and stared at the portrait of Mary Queen of Scots on the cover of his book. She did not look particularly regal, more like a housekeeper, with her long sharp nose and her eyes, two small brown fish swimming towards some object of disapproval—a smudge on the painter’s chin, perhaps, or a spider’s web in a corner of the window. Once, on a history outing, Ewan’s class had visited Holyrood Palace. Fascinated by the ornate ceilings and faded tapestries, Ewan had loitered at the back of the group. He entered Mary’s chambers just as the guide began her account of the death of Rizzio. “The Italian David Rizzio,” she recited, “was the Queen’s secretary and lute player. On Saturday the ninth of March, 1566, he was having a cosy supper with Mary and a few friends when her husband, Darnley, burst in with his followers, dragged Rizzio from the table, and stabbed him to death.”

  She had stressed “Italian” and “lute player” in a way that made clear these were not Rizzio’s main crimes. Several of Ewan’s classmates had snickered, as his sisters did when they discussed the S.A. of various boys. Sex appeal, you stupid berk, Bridget had said when he asked. Downstairs, the guide pointed out where the murderers had dumped Rizzio’s body. Ewan remembered standing alone, after the rest of his class had trooped on, staring at the ragged bloodstain on the wide wooden floorboards. Now he wondered how the blood could have survived four hundred years of housework. Perhaps he had conjured the stain out of the guide’s vivid descriptions. He must ask Mollie if she had ever seen it. Ewan let the book slide to the floor, unopened. He could barely figure out what was happening in his own life, or his sister’s, let alone a difficult dinner party four centuries ago.

  He shivered. All evening he had been trying not to yawn, but now he was too cold to sleep. He sat up and examined the pile of books on the bedside table. Between Dick Francis and a guide to the castles of Perthshire was a glossy purple spine. When he pulled out the book, he saw he was holding Chae’s latest novel, The Dark Forest. His secretary, Yvonne, had mentioned seeing the book in Waterstone’s a couple of months before, but this was Ewan’s first sight of it. The cover showed a wood of twisted, menacing trees and, in the distance, a sunlit clearing towards which two figures of indeterminate sex were making their way.

  Inside on the back flap was a picture of Chae, bearded and laughing. He looked as Ewan remembered him, the kind of person who could never enter a room unnoticed, not even buy a newspaper without making it a performance. “Chae Lafferty studied at Edinburgh University and the London School of Design. He has worked as a teacher, tree specialist, and journalist. He lives, ecologically, with his family, in a farmhouse in Perthshire. This is his fourth novel.” The dedication page said, “For Mollie, always.”

  Chae had already published his first novel when he came into the vegetarian restaurant in the Grassmarket where Mollie was waitressing and befriended her over the nut rissoles. That Christmas she bought copies for everyone in the family and quizzed them afterwards. Ewan was still at university, finishing his degree in economics, and was suitably impressed by the whole notion of writing a book, that someone he knew had done such a thing. The actual novel, however, about teenage boys and p
etty crime around the Leith docks, had disappointed him. Was it true, he asked Mollie, there were boys who lived like this, hawking heroin in the toilets of pubs?

  “Of course,” she said impatiently. “Don’t you read the newspapers? But that’s not the point. It’s a novel, Ewan, like Great Expectations.”

  “I understand that. It just seems so far-fetched. We both grew up in Edinburgh, and between us we don’t know a single junkie.”

  “Exactly,” Mollie said. “That’s why Chae’s book is so important.”

  He did not read the next two. Once she was living with Chae, Mollie became a less ardent proponent of his work, and anyway Ewan seldom read contemporary novels. Bridget said they were pretty good, and sometimes he gave them as presents to friends who claimed to like them. In a desultory, uncommitted fashion, trying to ignore his icy feet, he began to turn the pages.

  The opening chapter described a man named Leo taking the train from London to Edinburgh, as Ewan had done the night before, although their approaches to travel were rather different. Leo kept moving from seat to seat until it became apparent that he was not simply exercising his good looks on various women but dodging the ticket collector. Past Newcastle he sat down beside a girl with short fair hair and a rather mannish jaw, a social worker named Sam. Leo told her he was an actor and was able to satisfy her curiosity about several of the stars of East Enders. When they arrived in Edinburgh, she invited him back to her flat off the Royal Mile.

  Reading the description of their lovemaking, Ewan recalled Bridget talking about the sex in Chae’s books. “If I were Mollie,” she had said, “I would be quite upset. It certainly sounds as if Chae is doing research.”

  “He’s in his forties,” Ewan protested. “He had a string of girlfriends and a wife before he met Mollie. I’m sure he just casts his mind back, or invents things.”

  “All right,” Bridget said, and shrugged. “Contrary to the lessons of experience, let Chae be innocent until proven guilty.”