by Jill McGown
She could believe that. ‘Was that Elizabeth?’
He nodded. ‘Threats were issued about cutting him out of the will if he didn’t make an honest woman of her, which he duly did. Then he got involved in a scandal, and escaped being cashiered or whatever it is only because daddy had a word with the right person and the whole thing got hushed up. But Paul had to resign his commission and come to work under him at IMG, and he was told if he ever dishonoured his marriage vows again, and Paul senior got to hear about it, he’d inherit nothing. And Paul junior thinks he should never have been married in the first place, so he resents Elizabeth like hell for that, and she doesn’t even know why.’
She frowned. ‘But you do,’ she said. ‘Does Paul tell you everything?’
‘Yep. Always has. I’m never sure if he’s boasting or confessing. He’s told me all about you.’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘ ‘‘What’s twocking?’’ ’ he said, mimicking her, his eyes widely innocent.
She smiled.
His face became serious then. ‘He didn’t tell me what he did to you last Sunday, but I heard what was going on. And I heard his threat.’
Sandie reflected on that. If Josh knew about that, then he had been putting her in jeopardy quite deliberately with that virtually public quickie; he had engineered it, planned it, meant her to be running a risk. She had passed some sort of test under that willow tree. But he had evened up the stakes by putting his future on the line along with her physical well-being, and that was more like the man she thought he was. Paul had too healthy a regard for his own skin to take totally unnecessary risks; Josh didn’t give a toss about his own skin, but he didn’t give a toss about anyone else’s either.
Josh was dangerous. She liked that.
‘Anyway – after going into the army because daddy wanted him to, and marrying Elizabeth for fear of losing out, then working at IMG, which was the last thing he wanted to do, he finds when the will is read that he still has to wait for his inheritance, and mummy still won’t make the nasty man stop smacking his legs. So he resents her like hell too.’
‘But why do you hate her?’
‘I don’t,’ he said again, and stood up. ‘You should go home now. Get a good night’s sleep, and be here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.’
He walked with her to the front door; she stopped and turned on her way out. ‘Is Paul paying you for this?’
‘No.’
‘Then why give up a weekend on the boat?’
He smiled. ‘Because you’re not the only one receiving tuition. I’m teaching my half-brother a lesson too.’
‘How?’
‘By depriving him of your services.’
Oh. This time the disappointment was a surprise, and an unpleasant one. He was using her to get back at Paul for something, just as Paul had used her to get at Elizabeth. Perhaps her assessment of the two brothers had been right after all.
‘You needn’t have gone to all this trouble and expense,’ she said. ‘I’m going to deprive him of my services myself.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘How can I deprive him of services you’re not offering?’
She gasped. ‘So I’m to be available to him unless it suits you that I’m not?’
‘Something like that.’
He could at least tell her what Paul had done to him that she was being used in this way. ‘What are you teaching him a lesson for?’ she asked.
‘What he did to you.’
She stared at him, blinked a little, then smiled. ‘Do you care what he does to me?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She left then, though she really didn’t want to. Not that she felt she was likely to do anything other than fall into bed and go to sleep, but she would rather have done that with Josh than without him. She felt a little giddy; one moment she had come to terms with the fact that she meant nothing to Josh, that last Sunday had just been a bit of bravado, and the next he was telling her that what Paul had done mattered to him. She didn’t know how he felt, and she wanted to know; she needed to know.
Because whatever was going on in his head, whether or not she mattered to him, Josh mattered to her. He mattered more than anyone she had ever met.
SCENE XXII – BARTONSHIRE.
The following day, Sunday, July 20th, 10.15 a.m.
The Reservoir.
Paul pulled up at the reservoir, and watched, shading his eyes from the bright sunshine, as the two divers who were about to go in went through their pre-dive checks, slowly and carefully. Through the open windows of the car he could hear the birds sing, feel the slight, warm breeze that made the day perfect. He should be in Cornwall, not sitting here, he thought, his anger not one whit abated by the fact that one of the divers was indeed Sandie, who stood at the water’s edge and leant on her co-diver as she put on a pair of bright pink fins.
He waited until they had reached the pole at the far end of the platform and had signalled their intention to descend, before he got out of the car and, his feet crunching on the pebbled banking, walked along to where Josh stood. In the quiet of a Sunday morning in Little Elmley, Josh must have heard him coming, but he didn’t acknowledge the fact. He continued to watch the water; the ripples set up by the divers caught the light, making the reservoir look like an impressionist painting.
‘So what’s all this about?’ Paul asked.
‘Giving Sandie basic diving instruction.’
‘And she’s going on some urgent mission, is she, that she has to do a crash course?’
Josh shook his head. ‘I don’t think she’ll be quite ready for putting bombs under bridges,’ he said. ‘But she’ll be ready for an open-water dive, so no one watching the activities on board Lazy Sunday will ever suspect that last Saturday was the first time she’d even seen an aqualung.’ He looked over at him for the first time. ‘That was the idea, wasn’t it?’
‘I didn’t mean you to instruct her on my fucking time!’
Josh raised an eyebrow. ‘An appropriate choice of words,’ he said.
‘You know what I mean! You could have picked any two days. Why the weekend?’
‘I hoped to teach you some manners,’ said Josh. ‘I heard what was going on last Sunday.’
Paul hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. ‘Going on where?’ he asked. ‘When?’
‘On my boat. I don’t appreciate my guests being assaulted.’
Paul’s eyes widened. ‘It’s none of your business what I do with her,’ he said.
‘Then don’t make it my business. Stay off my boat.’ He walked away from Paul, down to the shoreline, as the divers surfaced.
Paul went after him, slithering over the pebbles on the steep banking. ‘Since when have you given a fuck what I do to women?’ he asked.
‘I don’t. But don’t do it on my boat, or you can forget your so-called diving weekends in Cornwall.’
He meant it. Paul could see his carefully planned and organized weekends slipping away, and he knew when he was beaten. He just didn’t know why he was being given the fight in the first place. But he could guess. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. But you keep your hands off her too.’
‘I don’t hit women.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I’m not interested, Paul. I couldn’t afford the going rate, anyway.’
‘She’s interested in you, though.’
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Josh stepped closer to him, and lowered his voice. ‘You told Elizabeth she was my girlfriend. So she was playing my girlfriend – what else did you expect her to do?’
Paul hadn’t thought of that. And he certainly hadn’t given Sandie a chance to explain. ‘You mean all that was an act?’ he said.
Josh jerked his thumb in her direction. ‘Look at her. She hates this. But she’s doing it, because she doesn’t want to lose her job. She’s not interested in anything but her good job and her company car, and I can’t offer that. Why would she be int
erested in me?’
Paul watched her as she moved with difficulty through the shallows, then looked back at Josh. ‘She was pretty bloody convincing,’ he muttered.
‘Today she’s a pretty convincing diver – but yesterday she was panicking in the swimming pool. And she was working just as hard last week. You’d have been in a bit of a hole if she hadn’t been convincing.’
He would, but he still didn’t see what all the fuss was about. ‘It was only a bit of a slap,’ he said. ‘What’s she been telling you?’
‘Nothing. I told you – I heard what was happening. And you can do what you like to her anywhere else, but on my boat you mind your manners. And you don’t ever use me as an excuse again. All right?’
‘Fine.’ Paul turned to go.
‘I think you should apologize.’
‘What?’ Paul almost laughed.
‘She’s talking about walking out on you. I’m trying to save your bacon here, big brother.’
‘Why?’
Josh smiled. ‘Because that way you’ll owe me.’
Paul nodded. That was what this was all about. He didn’t like owing Josh anything, but Sandie was an asset that he didn’t want to lose, as Josh well knew. She was even an asset in the office, which had come as a pleasant surprise. If she really was talking about leaving, he probably ought to do something.
She was clear of the water, and removing the heavy aqualung, taking off the mask, shaking the water from her short hair like a wet puppy as she walked towards them.
‘Howard?’ Josh said. ‘Can you nip up to the club and get a log-book for Sandie? I forgot to bring one.’
Howard complied, and Paul smiled at Sandie apologetically. ‘Look, Sandie,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry about what happened. I couldn’t say anything at work, obviously, but I wanted to. I was angry with Elizabeth – I had no right taking it out on you.’ There. He’d apologized to her. But he’d better try to make amends, he thought. ‘I want to make up for it,’ he said. ‘Buy you a present. What do you want? Jewellery? Perfume? Clothes? Anything – you name it.’
‘Real shooting lessons,’ she said.
Paul had seen the way she had looked at the revolver, handled it. He’d seen men like that in the army, and he didn’t trust them. Besides, he’d already had to teach Josh how to use the bloody thing in return for making use of his boat, and he hadn’t wanted to do that. For all he knew Josh would use it to kill someone, and not by accident this time. ‘It’s not my gun,’ he said, looking at Josh, willing him to veto the idea.
Josh smiled. ‘I’ve no objection.’
Paul sighed. If someone got a gleam in her eye just looking at a gun, she was going to get even more excited about using it. But, he reasoned with himself, it was a gun to which she had regular access, and his golden rule was that it was better that she knew how to use it than she didn’t. ‘All right,’ he said, as Howard came back.
He walked back to the car, a little less at odds with the world. But now he had to go home to Elizabeth, and that wasn’t something he was looking forward to.
‘This,’ Howard was saying, as Paul was on his way back to the car, ‘is your log-book. You log every dive you . . .’
Sandie was all right, he thought. She hadn’t made a scene or anything, which was what he had been dreading, with that Howard person hanging around. He looked at her, a garish splash of colour beside the two traditionalists, smiled, and decided to stay a while and watch her progress. Anything to delay going home.
SCENE XXIII – CORNWALL.
Sunday, July 20th, 11.10 a.m.
Angela’s Cottage.
Angela switched off the cassette-player as the phone rang, and sighed. She didn’t feel it was right to be incommunicado here, so she had to keep the bell on, unlike in her study at Little Elmley. She went out into the hallway, and picked it up resignedly.
It was Elizabeth, wanting to know where Josh and Sandie were so that she could invite them to dinner. And Angela too, of course. As a thank-you for dinner last week. She knew Angela didn’t like being interrupted while she was working, but she’d only just thought of it, really, and she would so like them to come to dinner.
Angela accepted the invitation, but told Elizabeth that she was unable to help as to Josh and Sandie’s whereabouts. She didn’t want her to know that they were just at Little Elmley; she had left them so that they could spend the weekend together without her presence inhibiting them, because even in a house that size, new relationships blossomed best without a third party hovering in the wings. And she wasn’t about to let anyone else interrupt them either.
And for someone who hadn’t wanted to interrupt her, Elizabeth had an awful lot to say about nothing. She sounded a little hyper to Angela; or tipsy, even, but it seemed a little early in the day to be drinking. Thankfully, Paul eventually returned from wherever he had been, and this apparently meant that Elizabeth had to hang up, for which Angela could only be grateful. She looked at her watch, and then checked the time of the phone-call. Elizabeth had been on the phone for forty-two minutes.
But she hadn’t wanted to interrupt her while she was working.
SCENE XXIV – BARTONSHIRE.
Sunday, July 20th, 12.05 p.m.
Paul and Elizabeth’s House.
‘Angela’s coming to dinner,’ Elizabeth said.
Paul didn’t reply; he just went to the sideboard and poured himself a whisky, then sank down in an armchair with the Sunday paper, and began sorting through all the various sections and magazines for the one he wanted.
‘Where were you?’ She helped herself to another gin and tonic. She had had her first just before she had finally decided to phone Angela, and another one while she was on the phone. Or maybe it was two. She didn’t care. All she knew was she had had enough of this fiction about Josh and Sandie, but Angela didn’t seem to know anything.
‘I just popped down to the diving platform,’ he said, depositing the unwanted portions on the floor beside him.
‘But you didn’t have your diving gear.’
‘I wasn’t diving.’ He folded the paper elaborately, taking great care to align the edges.
‘Was she there?’ She took ice from the bucket, but it had mostly all melted.
‘Who?’
‘Sandie Townsend.’ It was too hot; the breeze that shifted the curtains slightly just seemed to be pushing more hot air into the room.
He jumped up. ‘Are you going to stop doing this?’
‘Doing what?’ asked Elizabeth, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘Getting ice for my drink?’
‘Dragging Sandie Townsend’s name into every conversation we have!’
‘Why wouldn’t you want me to talk about Josh’s girlfriend?’
‘I’m sorry if she didn’t see fit to tell you where she intended spending the weekend, but it must be manifestly clear even to you that she isn’t with me!’
‘How do I know who’s been with you? You’ve been at Little Elmley.’ Elizabeth put down her drink as a thought occurred to her. ‘Is that where they are? Little Elmley?’ Of course. It was all clear to her now. ‘That’s what it is, isn’t it? They’ve not gone away at all! They’re in Little Elmley. Why else would you go there?’
‘To get away from you! But there was no one there. So I went to the club.’
‘You’re a liar, Paul. You were afraid that I would turn up again if you went to Penhallin, so you cancelled the whole weekend, and Josh brought her to you. Did you have to reimburse him for doing that?’
‘You’re talking nonsense, Elizabeth.’
‘Have you just been screwing her? You have, haven’t you?’
‘You—’ He raised his hand.
‘Oh, go on, Paul! You’ve been dying to do it for years!’
‘One day you’ll go too far,’ he said, getting himself under control, lowering his hand again. ‘Are you drunk?’
Very probably, thought Elizabeth. She had been pouring herself very large gins, and she had been drinking them very quickly. She
was very probably drunk. But she wasn’t stupid. It was obvious now what was going on. ‘Oh, it’s very neat,’ she said. ‘If she’s Josh’s girlfriend, that keeps Angela off his back and me off yours!’
‘I went down to the diving club,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘They said that there were divers at the platform, so I went to pass the time of day with them. So whatever paranoid fantasy you’ve dreamed up, forget it.’
‘Paranoid fantasy? Was watching you get horny showing her how to shoot the revolver a paranoid fantasy?’
‘I guided her aim. Nothing more. If you want to read something into it . . .’
She picked up her glass and threw it at him; he ducked out of its way, and it hit the wall. She didn’t even get the satisfaction of smashing it; it bounced off the wall and rolled back towards her, dribbling gin and tonic on the carpet.
‘I suggest you go and lie down if you’re supposed to be cooking dinner for my mother this evening.’
Oh, yes. It wouldn’t do to mess up mummy’s dinner. As long as mummy was happy, nothing else mattered, because mummy could turn just as nasty as her son if she was crossed. That was where he got his temper from.
Elizabeth stooped and picked up the glass, putting it down on the sideboard again. She took Paul’s advice, however, and went up to the bedroom and lay down. The room did seem to be swaying slightly.
They were bastards. All of them. They were all in it together. Josh, Paul and his bloody mother. She wasn’t being deceived at all; she was in on it too – she must be if they were at Little Elmley. They were all covering up for Paul in case Elizabeth got her hands on fifteen per cent of their precious family business. They thought if they covered up for him for long enough, then she would just go away and stop being a nuisance, but they were wrong. They were wrong.
She fell asleep then, and woke to a refreshing breeze stirring the curtains as the sun, low in the sky, cast moving shadows on the wall. She had a bit of a headache, but she was all right to make dinner for Paul’s mother, so that made everything just fine.
