‘Name of Genevieve,’ said Julie. ‘But I’ll say one thing for Raymond—you can see what he is. He’s not trying to look respectable as well.’
Hannie shook her head wildly, trying to clear her brain, trying to shake away the thoughts. She said, ‘I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it.’ Then she said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. I know I’ve slept around like a salesman while I’ve been away. Now I come back and scream because Adam’s done what I did. But it’s different, what I did, Julie. What I do is different. I didn’t damage anything. He’s broken everything—everything. The whole thing.’
‘That’s what all the guys say, Hannie, when it happens,’ murmured Julie. But Hannie was not listening.
Julie watched her as she dialled the number again. This time the telephone was answered. A woman’s voice spoke sharply. It went on. Hannie grew even paler. She said, ‘Vict—’ and the receiver buzzed in her hand. ‘She put the phone down. She told me I was disturbing them in the middle of the night—not to call again.’
‘What’s the number?’ cried Julie. ‘I’ll tell her something. I’ll come with you tomorrow and take her out. She’ll find out not to mess with you.’
Hannie shook her head again, blurrily. She said, ‘No, I’ll do what she says. I won’t call again. I’ll leave.’
‘You are mad,’ said Julie emphatically. ‘You take these—’ and she held out the sleeping pills. ‘Get some sleep. We’ll talk in the morning. I’ll come with you and sort out that bitch. She won’t like me—I’m black, I’m nasty—we’ll get it all straightened out, Hannie, I’m telling you, but,’ and she held out the pills again, ‘you must take these. Please, Hannie. Do it.’
Hannie took the pills and swallowed them. There were tears on her cheeks. She said, ‘She talks to me like that. Adam lets her. They have my children there as hostages. What can I do? What can I do?’
Julie got her to her feet and hauled her into the next room, where she laid her on the sofa and covered her with the coat. Hannie went on crying. She sobbed, ‘I tried. I tried. I only wanted a life away from the rain and the jam-making. Just something that would get money and so I wouldn’t feel trapped. It just happened as it did. I would have stopped. I would have. It was the children’s school fees. It was the sodding roof. My mother’s in a private clinic with a bad back. Oh God, what a price to have to pay. What a price. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been hauling round the world on my nerves for years and, now I look, I’ve been committing crime after crime to pay for shoes and clinics and roofs and ponies with dodgy fetlocks and sheep with foot-rot and now look, because I did it my husband’s left me for the back end of a show-jumper, and he’s got the children and I have no where to take them if I had them, and she won’t even let me talk to them—she keeps on saying they’re out, but they’re not out. I can hear them. I heard Flo say, “Is that Mummy?” Oh, God, Julie, what am I going to do?’ she cried.
And Julie, knuckling her weary eyes, said, ‘It’ll work out, Hannie’—and saw that Hannie was, suddenly and mysteriously, asleep on her sofa. Julie sat down in a chair thinking, She’ll sleep for fourteen hours.
But it was early next morning when Julie awoke with a start. The lights were still burning, the fire was embers. Hannie was standing by the bar, and talking on the telephone. ‘I’ll be in Suffolk by midday. Thank you.’
Still half-stunned with sleep, Julie raised her head and mumbled, ‘Hannie—what you doin’?’
‘Fixed myself up with a job,’ said Hannie. ‘I just left a message on their answering machine to say I’m going down to check it out—got to keep on going, Julie.’ Her voice was brisk and monotonous, as if it were being produced by a machine. That iron constitution again, Julie thought wearily, and that ability to keep on moving, no matter what. All the things which had kept her going as a successful smuggler were now operating against her. She had thrown off the effects of those two pills as if they were aspirin.
‘You’re making a big mistake,’ Julie said. ‘You’re speeding. You’re not responsible, you’re going to get it all wrong. I know. We both know. This isn’t brave. It’s stupid.’
‘I’m going to have a bath,’ said Hannie. She turned in the doorway and said, in the same flat tone, ‘I need the money, Julie.’
Julie hauled herself up and went to the door, yelling after Hannie, as she went up the stairs, ‘Hannie! You don’t need the money! That’s your stupid excuse. That’s not the reason. You’re feeding your fucking pride! Let it go, man. Do this the ordinary way, like an ordinary person. Let go, Hannie; I’m going to stop you doing this!’
But Hannie Richards went round the bend in the stairs without a word or a sign to her friend. Julie, in a rage, hit her head on the doorpost, saying under her breath, ‘Stupid—stupid—.’ Then she went quickly to the bar and rang Margaret Wilkinson at Lincoln’s Inn. The clerk told her Margaret was en route. Julie asked her to come straight to the Hope Club. She needed help. She decided not to ring Elizabeth, who was too far away to arrive in time.
Then she went downstairs and made some coffee, standing in the huge, empty kitchen surrounded by fridges and freezers and long shelves holding ranks of big aluminium saucepans.
Ten minutes later Hannie rushed in, still wearing the torn purple dress. In her hand she carried her boots. She started to wash off the mud, splashing the immaculate stainless steel sink, piling up soggy kitchen towels on the draining board.
‘Have some coffee,’ said Julie.
‘In a minute,’ said Hannie. ‘I’ll have to stop off on the way and buy some clothes, and a coat.’
‘Shut up,’ said Julie. ‘You don’t have to do this. Your judgement’s right out. You’re going to blow it. I’ve seen this before—I’ve done it. People in this state make mistakes. You’ll get the wrong deal. You’re trying to leave for a world where Adam hasn’t got a new girl and nothing’s happened. You can’t do it.’
Hannie turned on her. ‘Shut up!’ she said. ‘Just shut up, Julie! I don’t care! I’m telling you I don’t care. I’m going to take this job—whatever it is. I’ve got a reason. The man’s a multi-millionaire, and he’s desperate about something, and when I find out what it is, I’m going to drive the price sky high. And why? Because I’m coming back rich, with enough money to set the girls and myself up properly. I’m going to claim my children from that bastard. He’s ponced my earnings off me all these years—and now you think I should stay at home and mourn and fuck about with divorce settlements? I’m going to do it my way.’
‘Yeah—the hysterical way,’ shouted Julie. ‘All I’m saying is, stop. Think. Decide later.’
‘This is no time for thinking,’ said Hannie, wrenching on a boot in the middle of the floor. ‘This is time for doing.’ And she pulled on the other boot.
‘Hannie, it could be dangerous. You need your judgement,’ Julie cried. She barred the door with her arm as Hannie tried to race through. Hannie pushed the arm away.
‘Come back!’ shouted Julie and heard Hannie’s steps go through the restaurant, heard another door bang and then another. She smacked her hand against her head and stood in the silent kitchen, thinking, This looks a bad one, a really bad one this time.
Not long after, when Margaret arrived, she said, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t stop her.’
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ said Margaret. ‘I don’t suppose anyone could have stopped her.’ She added, ‘Just prepare to pick up the pieces, that’s all.’
HANNIE STOPPED ON HER JOURNEY TO BUY HERSELF a conventional skirt, jacket and jersey. She drove fast but carefully to Suffolk. She was conscious all the way that her brain seemed to have split into several parts, all doing different things. One part controlled the car, followed the traffic signs, even consulted the road map. The other seemed to be making calculations about what to do when she came back from her next job, whether it was this one or another. There would be a divorce, moves, money to be found and arrangements to be made. Another part of her head, compulsively, imagined Adam and Victoria and her
children together. At other times she played over scenes of the past, finding all the clues that should have led her to know this was going to happen. A good part of her simply screamed, screamed with rage and pain, so loudly that from time to time she thought she could hear it echoing in the car. Sometimes she thought none of this had happened. Sometimes she thought she would be able, somehow, to recover what she had lost.
She drove on with concentration, understanding dimly that she was not thinking in an ordinary way but believing she was sufficiently in control to function normally.
In this state she arrived at the large gateway to Thrickston Manor, in Suffolk. The massive wrought-iron gates were firmly shut. Getting out of her car, she said into the speaker attached to the right-hand gate, ‘It’s Mrs Richards,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to see Sir Duncan Kyte.’
A security guard came out of a lodge on the other side of the gate. ‘I’m afraid you have to leave your car outside, Mrs Richards,’ he said through the bars.
‘But that drive must be at least a quarter of a mile long,’ she told him, pointing to the tree-lined avenue behind him.
‘I shall be taking you in my vehicle,’ he said. ‘Would you park your car in that space over there …’
‘Sir Duncan is obviously very security-conscious,’ she remarked conversationally to the guard as they drove to the house. His coat was unbuttoned and he made no attempt to conceal the leather strap over his shirt which obviously supported a holster near his armpit.
‘Better safe than sorry,’ he told her.
‘That’s a fact,’ she said. She did not like this surly guard. Ordinarily she would have treated the man as a clue. Ordinarily she studied the servant to find out what the master was like. But she was worn out and using too much energy to block off the thought of what had happened to her. The brain that is saying loudly to itself, ‘Forget; it never happened,’ is not alert, is not taking in the stray impressions which, in a trade like Hannie’s, are often crucially important. Thus she discounted her surprise that Sir Duncan Kyte, the noted industrialist, needed a bully-boy to guard his gates. She ignored the gloomy impression made on her by the long, tree-dripping drive and did not particularly worry when two big Dobermans rushed across the lawn and barked viciously at the car as it passed. Her instincts, which she had relied on for so long, had failed. She had not guessed at her husband’s discontent before she left for Chad. She had not spotted, when she returned, that he was having a love affair with a neighbour. All this had not only wounded her terribly, it had made her feel foolish and demoralized. And she was tired, seriously tired, but she did not realize that either.
At the front door of the large grey house she was handed over on the steps to a manservant. A glance passed between the two men which Hannie took to be one reassuring the other that she was unarmed and harmless. It must, she thought, be a dangerous world these days for multinational corporation bosses. Like their nineteenth-century equivalents, the Victorian mill and mine owners, facing the starving work-force from the steps of their mansions, these men must go in fear of enraged guerrillas furious at the political distortions created in their own countries by self-interested foreign capitalists. Or possibly maddened patriots angry about favours, like weapons, given to other countries. Sir Duncan must have enemies everywhere—or did he just imagine he had?
When she met him, after a long walk with the manservant through a hall hung with paintings, she decided that whatever else he was, Sir Duncan did not appear paranoid. He sat by a window which looked down over a long lawn to the river below. As Hannie came in he stood up—a tall, thickset man, around sixty, clean-shaven, with a great deal of well-cut grey hair. He was, she thought, not a fraction under six feet four inches, and was dressed in a tweed suit. As he came towards her, his face lighted up in a charming smile. ‘My dear,’ he said in a gallant tone, ‘I’ve been so looking forward to your arrival.’
‘I’m pleased to be here,’ Hannie replied quietly. But there were too many large roses in the light, large room and the room itself was too hot. She felt slightly ill. She did not notice at that moment that Duncan Kyte’s large, handsome and barely lined face bore, under its fading tan, an alarming pallor. She merely felt uneasy, as if all was not quite as it should be. She remembered that Duncan Kyte had won a VC during the Second World War, at the Normandy landings.
They sat down in two facing chairs by the window. Rain pelted down over the lawn and trees outside. He offered her a drink, and she asked for whisky. He sat looking at her closely, without speaking. He must, she thought, have disconcerted many an opponent that way. She said, ‘Sir Duncan, if you’re thinking that I look ill and tired, you are right. I’ve had some personal problems. But you’ll have established my credentials, you know I’m reliable.’
He said, ‘I have indeed. You’re very candid. I’m sorry you have had difficulties, but this is not an easy task I have in mind. Can I take it the problems are over, as far as your work is concerned?’
‘They had nothing to do with my work,’ she said. ‘Once I’m out of the country they won’t even exist.’
There was a moment’s silence, then he said, ‘All right’
‘How did you hear of me?’ she asked.
‘Through Tom Dean. You helped him to get his family jewellery out of Rio, he told me. He was quite impressed.’
‘I can’t say it was a hard job,’ said Hannie, recalling that all she had done was meet the jewel thief she had hired on a corner, take the package of jewellery and hand him his pay. She had smuggled the gems through in a false-bottomed suitcase, but that had been an unnecessary precaution. The likelihood of the twenty-two-year-old Mrs Dean the fourth reporting the theft was small. She had absconded with her husband’s family jewellery, which was meant to be handed on intact from generation to generation, and either would not find out about the counter-theft in time, or would accept the loss philosophically. Hannie added, ‘Mrs Dean was just à chancer.’
Kyte nodded. He said, ‘What Tom Dean told me was that you were not the sort of person who aroused suspicion.’ It was plain he was not prepared to discuss his business yet. Hannie hoped that the lines of fatigue, over-tolerance, a kind of moral exhaustion which can give you away, had not started to appear on her face. She knew all that was in her brain, all right. But she needed this job badly.
They followed the manservant into a small dining room where oriental-style latticed windows hid the grey view from the diners. The table was set for three, but it was not until Hannie and Sir Duncan had finished their soup and begun on some veal cutlets that they were joined by a wispy girl in a blue kaftan. On her feet she wore sandals. Her blonde hair was frizzed out in a style reminiscent of some years earlier. This was obviously her at-home style, but it looked as if she had a strong attachment to the days of flower power or the art nouveau heroine. Hannie could not make up her mind if the girl was his daughter or his mistress. Whichever she was, a lot of Kyte’s money was snorted up her retroussé nose and showed in her big, wandering blue eyes.
‘Serena, did you have a good rest?’ he enquired.
The girl nodded vaguely. She was shooing away the maid, who was trying to put a cutlet in front of her. Duncan Kyte was angry. ‘It’s about time someone in this household remembered—will you please go and grill some plaice,’ he demanded. Serena, it turned out, was a vegetarian. The meal, fairly quiet till then, now became completely silent. Sir Duncan watched Serena. Hannie, who had never been able to understand the habit of leaving vital matters undiscussed until meals were over, became impatient. The topic hung across the table like a cloud of cigar smoke. At this point Serena complained about finding bones in her plaice. Kyte, fussing again, had it removed. Hannie decided Serena must be the girlfriend, not the daughter. In her experience even the most tender parent had no time for complaints about fishbones. She was back on the subject she was trying to evade. When Serena began to give her lingering looks, she returned them, purely to take her mind off the subject of her children. Kyte, a strange
r to these ways, saw nothing. Oh, is it worth it, thought Hannie, making eyes at Duncan Kyte’s freaky girlfriend? Was anything worth it? Why didn’t she get up and go away? Something was wrong here. She stared at her plate, feeling herself sliding down and down into the ashpit of depression she was trying to avoid. Pull yourself together, Hannie Richards, she told herself. You’ve got a living to earn.
‘Do you know Kev Coleman?’ Serena suddenly asked. Hannie looked up. Cocaine Sue here was no fool in her rodent-like way. Hannie said, ‘I’ve met him,’ in a neutral tone. Kevin Coleman, still in his twenties, was the vicious boss of a gang of vicious East End villains. If this girl had come within a mile’s radius of Kevin Coleman and was also Kyte’s girlfriend, then he, Kyte, was in trouble. No successful businessman, friend of banker and cabinet minister, an ex-son-in-law of a duke’s brother and a man generally on nodding terms with the better end of the royal family could afford to have around anybody, man, woman or child, who even knew Kevin Coleman’s name. This one not only knew his name but his address and telephone number as well. She even guessed why—Coleman had interests in pornographic video films, and Serena had the air of being a star from that stable. A child star, probably, Hannie thought gloomily. All she said was, ‘He asked me to do a job for him once, but I didn’t like the sound of it.’
Serena had left most of the second plaice. Hannie, still suffering as she thought from the days of excess, refused a dessert.
Sir Duncan stood up and said to Serena, ‘We’ll have coffee and a chat in the library.’
Serena nodded, helping herself to another portion of chocolate mousse. Hannie stood up. She went to the lavatory near the hall and was sick. She washed her face and hands and went to the library. On the way she passed the dining room and through the open door saw Serena, her blonde head well down over her plate, passionately shovelling in chocolate mousse.
Hannie Richards Page 16
