The Birthday Present

by Barbara Vine

  Of course I can't be sure of this, but isn't it the only possible answer? Ivor Tesham didn't intend to drive the BMW to pick up Hebe or send another driver in the BMW to pick her up, but paid Dermot and Lloyd to do it in a rented car, so that she could be delivered to him like a sexy parcel from a mail order company, dressed in absurd gear, flung down, I suppose, on his bed to await him. That's how it has to be. That's why he asked me that question: “What are you going to do?” I can see the fear in his face now, I can smell it, but what he was afraid of I don't exactly know. A story in the papers? Can anyone be so conscious of his reputation that he's afraid of a few lines on a diary page making him look faintly ridiculous? Apparently, he can.

  No one seems to know what has happened to Dermot Lynch. It's said that the police never give up on a case like that. None of it gets in the media because quiet persistent work behind the scenes, searching, sifting, considering, isn't the hot news the press likes. Sometimes when I look through the scrapbook at the picture of Ivor Tesham and Carmen at his friend's wedding or the picture of him grinning, one fist raised, when he retained his seat at the general election, I imagine myself walking into the nearest police station and telling them about that single meeting I had with him. And how he asked me what I was going to do.

  One picture I shan't be putting in the scrapbook, and that's the one I found in the back of Hebe's jewelry drawer.

  WE DEPEND ON the television in this household. I don't particularly care for it, I never have, but Justin loves it, as all children do, and Gerry watches it compulsively. I used to think he was an intelligent man but I've had to revise my opinion. He and Justin sit on the sofa—I sit in an armchair—and watch program after program with no discrimination whatsoever. Well, I shall correct that. If anything very horrible comes on, battles and corpses—they don't seem to mind showing dead bodies anymore—he doesn't turn it off, he changes channels. There used to be a phrase current when I was a child: “Glued to the glowing cathode.” I think that was quite clever, it was so apt. Gerry will change to anything Justin may want to watch, the most banal cartoons or pop music rubbish, but if I dare to ask for something marginally more intellectual, he always says Justin wouldn't like it or it wouldn't be suitable for Justin. I have actually said in reply that in that case I'll go and watch it on the set in the kitchen and, outrageous as it seems, he hasn't said a word to stop me. Usually it ends in my going upstairs to work on the scrapbook, writing captions to some of the pictures and putting names to the people with Tesham and Carmen in some classy venue.

  So when the television broke down a couple of weeks ago I was rather pleased than otherwise. At least it would mean we might have a proper conversation in the evenings, Gerry talking to his son, which he was supposed to want to do when he started letting him stay up late. Or we could even listen to the radio. But things happened differently. The man who came to repair the set said he would have to take it away and it might be gone for at least a week. You would have thought the end of the world had come. The black-and-white set in the kitchen would have to be brought into the living room, Gerry said. Never mind that my daytime viewing would be at an end or my alternative viewing in the evening.

  I don't know what made me say what I did. Or, rather, I do know, I know only too well. It's the way I am, the way I act. Bluntly, brutally, I want them to love me—well, to like me, for that's all I can expect. It hasn't been allowed to happen. How could it when Gerry is always telling Justin how wonderful his mother was, showing him her picture, telling him in a soppy outdated way that his mother is in heaven, loving him and watching over him? I'd hoped Gerry would—well, perhaps not love me, I gave up on that long ago, but at least grow fond of me, tell me again that I was indispensable. But there are no signs he feels any different toward me than he did when first I came. None at all. So to make them like me, fool that I am, I offered them my television set.

  It was at home in my flat, of course, but put away in that same big cupboard where the case full of Hebe's stuff is. Pandora had bought a new one, something special, I don't know what, but the latest thing. I'd seen it on the only occasion I'd been back, when I went there to fetch a book I wanted to reread. Anyway, I don't think I'd ever had such a response from Gerry to any offer I'd made. His smile, the warmth in his face, this was what I'd wanted to evoke from him all the time I'd known him, not just since I've been here. We were standing up at the time. We were in the living room, looking at the defunct set and waiting for the man to come. Gerry actually took my hands, he took both my hands in his, saying how grateful he'd be, what an act of kindness.

  The next thing was that I'd have to go and fetch it. I said he'd have to help me carry it in from the backseat of the car but first I'd phone Pandora and let her know I'd be coming for it. She's hardly ever in on the rare occasions I phone her and I have to leave messages, but this time she was.

  “Don't you worry,” she said in that distant whispery voice of hers. “I'll bring it myself. I'm coming up your way. Irving Road, isn't it? I've got a friend in Herbert Road and I'm coming to see her. Michael will help me get it in the car.”

  Michael was the man on the floor below, the one who had told me off for throwing away that Christmas food. I'd never spoken to him since and I didn't want him here. Come to that, I didn't much want her here either. In my experience when people call, even if it's only on an errand like this one, they always expect a drink or a cup of tea or even food. Grania and Lucy are like that. They “look in,” as they put it, on their way home from work or on a Saturday afternoon, and always they say, “I'm parched” or “I'm dying for a drink,” and I'm the one who has to get it. Still, that Saturday it was pouring with rain and I was glad I didn't have to schlep (as Hebe would have said) all the way down to Kilburn and get wet in the process of carrying that heavy set to the car.

  Just before Pandora was due, Wendy turned up. I don't know why those girls come. I don't know what they get out of it. They bring nothing, they do nothing, and their conversation isn't worth listening to. Well, I do know why they come, of course I do. They're all after Gerry. He's young, he's quite good-looking, he's free, and though he's mean with his money he earns quite a lot. Those girls think that one of them will get him. I don't think myself they've much of a chance. I had more chance than they had, but that's over now. Like the fool he is, he'll stay faithful to Hebe's memory for the next twenty years. They really ought to know that with all their cuddling up to Justin and bringing him presents, they are just wasting their time.

  Wendy was wearing a dress like a school gym tunic, with her hair in pigtails, and she's a good ten years too old for that. “I didn't have time for lunch,” she said. “I'm starving.”

  Gerry gave her a plateful of leftovers from our own lunch and asked me if I'd “be kind enough” to make her a cup of tea. While she was drinking it, sitting at the kitchen table, Pandora arrived. I've mentioned before that she belonged to the same type as Hebe, tall, slim, and with long blond hair, but there, I'd thought, the resemblance ended. She had this peculiar husky voice, as if she'd got a throat infection, whereas Hebe's had been strong and clear. But when she walked into the hallway something strange happened. It was a dull day and no one had yet turned lights on. Justin came out of the kitchen, where he'd been drinking juice at the table with Wendy, came to fetch some toy he wanted to show her, and when he saw Pandora he stopped and he stared at her. His lips parted as he looked up at her and then disappointment seemed to spread across his face, a desolation that changed him, briefly, from a boy of four into a little old man. It was quite interesting to see. He turned and ran into the living room, where Gerry was, and I heard the sounds of his sobbing.

  “What's wrong?” Pandora said. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing. I don't know.”

  I wasn't going to tell her that, just for a moment, for an instant, the child had thought she was his mother come back. For that, I'm sure, was what it was. I switched the light on. I took Pandora into the living room and introduced her
to Gerry. He was sitting with the still-weeping Justin in his arms, held tightly against him, so he couldn't get up and couldn't shake hands, but he said hello and thanked her for bringing the television. I'd half expected him to react in the same way as Justin had, but he showed no sign of seeing any resemblance. He couldn't leave Justin, so Pandora and I went out to fetch the set, joined after a moment or two by Wendy, who was more hindrance than help.

  More tea had to be made once we'd got the television up and running, and Wendy found a cake in a tin I was saving for next day, when Gerry's mother was coming. But there was no use saying anything. She always behaves as if she has a right to the run of the place when she “looks in.” Justin calmed down and began to behave with Pandora as he would with any ordinary stranger, a bit shyly, answering her warily when she spoke to him and once or twice running to his father to hide his face against Gerry's knees. Gerry and Pandora were getting on famously, their conversation being all about his terrible loss of Hebe. As far as I know, Pandora had never previously heard of her. Still, she made all the right sympathetic noises, which I could see annoyed Wendy.

  After they'd both gone he asked me why I'd never said what a nice friend I'd got.

  “She's not my friend,” I said. “She's my tenant.”

  He went on talking about her and how kind she was, as if the television she'd brought was hers, not mine. “She reminded me just a little of Hebe,” he said.

  “Really?” I said. “I can't see it myself.”

  By that time I had more or less given up hoping for any return from Justin of the love I had offered him. I am afraid he is naturally sullen, as Hebe was when she couldn't get her own way. But nothing had prepared me for the outburst of rage, a real sustained tantrum, he indulged himself in that evening. It wasn't just sobs this time but full-blown screaming as he flung himself about on his bed. What he needed was a good smack. That's what Mummy would have given him, but I knew what the result would be if I did. I could imagine the reproaches, the sulks, Gerry threatening me with the loss of my job, as if he could get anyone else to do what I did. So I shut Justin up in his bedroom, listened for a while outside the door to the sounds of hysteria and, to tell the truth, wondered how I had ever fancied I was getting fond of him.

  Gerry was out. After all that nonsense about needing a television, about how it was the only thing to distract him from his memories, he had abandoned it the first day it arrived and gone off to make a speech at some charity do. It was quite pleasant to have the place to myself for a change. No television for me, of course. I was glad to do without it. I fetched the scrapbook down and quite enjoyed going through it, from the first picture of Tesham at Sandy Caxton's funeral to the most recent, Our Hero (as I call him to myself) presenting some award or medal to a flight lieutenant.

  Justin must have fallen asleep, for there was no more noise from upstairs. I tried to imagine Tesham paying those men, explaining to them what he wanted, waiting for Hebe to come and cursing when she didn't. When he had been thwarted. None of this was at all hard for me to picture. I wondered too, if she had all that gear, did he have sex toys? I don't really know what sex toys are, I've heard the term, that's all. Dildoes, perhaps, and furry objects. Did they play with them? Thinking of him, his suave manner and his austere looks, I couldn't imagine it and I stopped then, because you can only get excited up to a point, after which you start to feel sick.

  16

  For all Ivor might say about suburban houses and double garages, he seemed to like visiting us, with or without Juliet. He was fond of our children, which rather surprised me, I don't know why, and he had found a young adorer in Nadine. His car, which he parked in the street in Westminster, kept taking knocks from passing drivers, once quite a serious dent in the offside, and he asked us if he could keep it in our second garage “just until he moved,” what ever that meant.

  When he came up to fetch it for the drive out to his constituency, he would arrive early and those talks we had used to have about the situation he found himself in two and a half years before resumed. Up to a point, that is. Now what he said was more a reflection on the things that had happened, even a kind of wonder that he had been almost mad with anxiety, with terror of what the following morning would bring, unable to sleep and always on the verge of a panic, which must at all costs be concealed.

  “I used to feel,” he said, “like that character in Shakespeare who says he'd like to read the book of fate, so that I could have some idea of what would happen next week, even next day.”

  I said he wouldn't like it if he could. We only want access to the book of fate when we can read something favorable to us in it. What if it had told him Dermot Lynch would come round next Thursday in full possession of his faculties and memory? He laughed. He actually laughed.

  “On the subject of Dermot Lynch,” Iris said, “I take it you've kept to what you said and haven't been near that family?”

  “I suppose I may as well tell you,” he said.

  Nadine came into the room then and climbed onto Ivor's knee. Half an hour later he'd fetched the car and gone to pick up Juliet for their weekend in Morningford. It must have been about a fortnight later that I was in Maida Vale, visiting a client who lived in one of those big Italianate houses that front onto the canal in Blomfield Road. As well as being wheelchair-bound, my very wealthy client never answered letters and nor did his wife, so I had no choice but to go to him, taking with me a number of forms that needed signing for the Inland Revenue. It was almost Christmas, a day or two before Christmas Eve. Christmas trees were glittering with lights in the windows, holly wreaths hung on front doors, and there were strings of lights along the canal. After I left my client I lingered awhile, leaning over the railing to look along the shining stretch of water up to the lights in the café on the bridge.

  I began to walk down toward the underground station, not to get into the tube—no one in his senses would try to travel by tube from Maida Vale to where we lived—but to hail one of the taxis which head up Warwick Avenue from Clifton Gardens. I was about halfway down, looking in vain for taxis coming that way and from the opposite direction, when I noticed the couple who had walked over the bridge and were waiting to cross Blomfield Road. It was dark but a clear evening and I couldn't have been mistaken. The two people, arm in arm, now halfway across, were Ivor and Juliet Case. I started to hail them, lifting my right arm, but the taxi driver, coming at last, took this for a summons to him and stopped for me. I got in; I wanted to get home. Whether or not Ivor had seen me I didn't then know.

  “Where do you think they'd been?” Iris asked when I told her.

  I said I didn't know. How would I know? Paddington Station?

  “Why would Ivor go to Paddington Station or come from Pad dington Station? On foot? He wouldn't. I'll tell you where they'd been. To William Cross Court.”

  I'd forgotten the name. I'd forgotten who lived there. I had to ask her.

  “The Lynches, of course. Mrs. Lynch and her sons live in William Cross Court. It's in Rowley Place and Rowley Place runs from St. Mary's Gardens to Warwick Avenue. Don't look at me like that, Rob, I do know. I looked the place up in the A–Z when I was phoning her for Ivor.”

  “He wouldn't go there,” I said. “He might have done once but not now. Why would he?”

  “I'm going to ask him.”

  And she did. Christmas happened first, of course. Both children were by then of an age to be in paroxysms of excitement anticipating the day. Wearing a white beard and dressed in Iris's hooded red dressing gown with cotton wool stitched onto it in appropriate places, I sat on the stairs for hours without number, my sack of stocking gifts beside me, waiting for them to go to sleep. I don't think Nadine ever did sleep that night. I unloaded my presents into her stocking at five in the morning while she gazed at me enraptured, having no notion then that I might be only her father in disguise. I could go on and on about that Christmas, joy and glory for Iris and me as much as for our children, but I won't. I'll proceed to Iv
or, who came alone on Boxing Day, bearing gifts.

  I MAY AS well tell you, he had said a few weeks ago. Then Nadine's interruption had put it out of our heads. “It's absolutely all right,” was how he began now, and varying it, “Absolutely okay. Juliet's been visiting them since before Dermot came out of hospital. She and Philomena are friends.”

  “Philomena? You mean you're on those sorts of terms?”

  “I don't know what you mean by ‘those sorts of terms,' Iris. It's usual these days for people to call each other by their Christian names or hadn't you noticed? Juliet suggested I go there with her one day and I did. They wanted to see me. It was all perfectly pleasant and friendly, and a great relief, I can tell you.”

  He did tell us and it took quite a long time. At first, when Juliet suggested he go and visit Philomena Lynch and see Dermot, he was adamant. Absolutely not, he had said, it's out of the question. But they don't bear you any ill will, she said. He asked her how much they knew.

  “Dermot told Sean about it when you first asked him,” she said. “I don't think Philomena knows. They wouldn't have said anything to her for fear she'd have been shocked, as she would have been, Ivor. She's an old-fashioned, deeply religious woman. She's a staunch Catholic. But Sean knew from the start. He says he and Dermot had a laugh about it.”

  All this had happened in the previous summer, when Ivor was still sufficiently alive to the danger he was in to shudder at those words. Sean had to know, Juliet went on, because Dermot wanted to borrow his gun. It was true that Sean bought the gun from a man in Warsaw who was trying to get American dollars or British sterling together to escape the country, but his motive in buying it wasn't as naïve and innocent as she had first told him. Sean had a criminal record, which was why the police had questioned him over Sandy Caxton's murder. At this point in Ivor's narrative Iris let out a cry of horror.