Almost a crime, p.57
Almost a Crime, page 57
Until . . .
‘Gabriel, do wake up. Please.’ She was smiling at him, but was anxiously serious as well. ‘It’s almost four, we have to eat something and then get ready and be across at Cobblers Cove by six.’
‘What’s so great about Cobblers Cove?’
‘Gabriel! I told you. We’re meeting Fergus there. For drinks.’
‘Can’t we go tomorrow instead? Don’t they have a phone?’
‘No, we can’t go tomorrow. They’re expecting us today. Anyway, I want to go, I want to show it to you.’
‘I’d rather be shown it without Fergus.’
‘Oh, Gabriel! He’s perfectly nice really. Come on, get up. Elvira’s left a perfectly gorgeous Caesar’s salad. We must eat it.’
‘Can’t we have it for dinner?’
‘No, we’re going out for dinner.’
‘Out!’
‘Yes. My treat. To a place just along the beach. Don’t look like that – only the two of us. It’s so heavenly, the food is just fantastic and—’
‘I’d rather eat here,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘I just would.’
She hesitated. Then, as if it settled things, ‘Well, we can’t. There isn’t anything.’
‘Whyever not?’
‘Because I told Elvira we’d be out for dinner.’
‘Without asking me? What I’d like?’
‘Yes. Mea culpa.’ She smiled, then saw he wasn’t smiling back. ‘Gabriel, please don’t be difficult, I just know you’ll like it. The place is so lovely. And the food is wonderful. Come on, get up. Or shall I bring you a plate of salad in bed?’
‘No,’ he said with a sigh. ‘No, I’m terribly hot.’
‘It’s cooler in the dining room. The fan’s been going full speed.’
It was cooler. And the salad was excellent. He drank a very cold beer, felt his irritability easing.
‘Now, what are you going to wear?’ she said, as they sipped iced coffee on the verandah.
‘Wear? God, I don’t know.’
‘Well, what trousers have you brought?’
‘Octavia, I haven’t brought any trousers. Only the flannels I had on on the plane.’
‘No others at all?’
‘No. Sorry. No others.’
She was clearly struggling to say the right thing, not to sound dismayed. She failed. ‘Gabriel, that’s – that’s a pity.’
‘Why? You said we’d be alone, at the cottage, as you call it. Why should I have thought I had to bring lots of trousers?’
‘You must have thought we’d go out a bit. To restaurants and so on. Come prepared for it. Most people would.’
‘I’m not most people.’
‘No, I know,’ she said, kissing him, clearly struggling to make a joke of it. ‘Well – you’ll have to wear your flannels, then. What about a shirt?’
‘Again, I’ve only got the one I wore on the plane.’
‘What – the white one? Is that really all you’ve got with you?’
‘Yes. And it’s sitting in the linen bag in the bedroom.’
‘Elvira’s probably washed it,’ she said, jumping up. ‘I’ll go and see.’
Elvira had; but it was still very wet.
‘Damn. Well, you will have to borrow one of Daddy’s. It may be a bit wide, but it’ll do.’
‘Can’t I wear a T-shirt?’
‘No, Gabriel, you can’t. Not to Cobblers Cove.’
He suddenly felt violently irritated. ‘Look, Octavia, why don’t you go without me? I don’t want to go, I’m perfectly happy here, I had no idea I had to bring a half my wardrobe with me, I’ll just stay and read. My back’s sore anyway.’
‘I told you you should wear a T-shirt snorkelling,’ she said, her tone crisply bossy.
‘Yes, well, I thought that cream stuff would do. Must be something wrong with it.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it, Gabriel, it’s just not a high enough factor. You should have asked me.’
‘Octavia, I’ve hardly had a chance to ask you anything at all over the past few days. If I had, I wouldn’t have wasted it on bloody silly rubbish like suncream. For God’s sake, just stop bugging me, will you? And go off to meet your friends on your own. I don’t want to come.’
‘Gabriel—’ She put out her hand, covered his. Her face was very concerned, her dark eyes brilliant with tears. ‘Gabriel, this is awful. We mustn’t quarrel. This is supposed to be our time together. To get to know each other.’
‘Exactly,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean why waste it going to meet bloody silly people for drinks, which means I have to wear clothes which I patently don’t possess?’
She was silent for a moment; then she said, ‘I’m going for a swim. I think you’re being very unfair.’
He opened another beer and sat glaring out at the beach.
She was gone for about ten minutes; when she came back, she smiled at him awkwardly. ‘I’m – sorry, Gabriel,’ she said, ‘very sorry. I didn’t think.’
He looked at her. She found it hard to apologise for anything, he knew, so great was her need to get everything right, to know she had done so. She was wearing a one-piece navy swimsuit; with her hair slicked back, her anxious expression, she looked like a little girl. He stood up, went over to her, kissed her.
‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘Of course I should have brought some more clothes. It’s just that – well, I didn’t think I’d need them. I haven’t got them anyway,’ he added and grinned at her.
‘No. I know.’
Suddenly he wanted her very badly. Her nipples stood out very clearly under the swimsuit, drops of water hung on her mouth. He bent and kissed it; she tasted salty, earthy.
‘Let’s go back to bed now,’ he said, ‘and I swear we’ll go and meet your friends tomorrow instead. I’ll even ring them, if you like, say you’re not well. So you don’t feel you’re letting them down.’
She hesitated, then smiled and said slowly, ‘No, I’ll ring them. I – think that’s a nice idea, Gabriel. Very nice indeed.’
Later, much later, as they lay finally apart, shaken, sated with pleasure, he said, ‘I tell you what. Tomorrow morning, we could go into Bridgetown and buy me a couple of shirts. How would that be?’
She leaned over and kissed him, very gently. ‘The sex must have been very good,’ was all she said.
Tom couldn’t ever remember feeling so lonely. Like all over-busy people, he fantasised about having time, space, life to himself; thought wistfully of a day filled with only a neat and orderly structure of appointments, rather than a mountain of them, heaped furiously one upon the next; of having an evening to himself to read, watch TV, rather than sharing every one with clients or even friends, over dinners, drinks, theatres, exhibitions; dreamed of spending a quietly self-indulgent weekend, a day even, alone in the house, doing what he wanted, pleasing himself. Now, at the end of just such a weekend, he felt strange, disoriented, longed as he would never have believed for noise to fill the silence – even the twins arguing, Minty crying, Octavia playing the chamber music she so loved and he so hated on the stereo; longed for people to fill the space – even interrupting him as he read the papers, taking the pen he was doing the crossword with, taking the water he had just boiled for coffee to make tea or hot lemonade with – longed for demands to disturb his thoughts, stress to wreck his peace. It did not come; and his sense of loss, planted in solitude, nurtured by silence, burgeoned and grew into a vast, oppressive misery.
He thought of the twins, playing with their friends by some swimming pool in the Tuscan countryside, of Minty, smiling and giggling, over-indulged by Caroline’s parents, of Octavia, lying in the sunshine on the golden Barbadian beach, and not only on the beach, but in the large, white-veiled bed where he and she had spent most of their honeymoon; and not alone either, but with her lover, and although he knew that he deserved some of the loneliness, much of the pain, he also knew that other factors, avenging furies even, had played their part, and not entirely fairly, in creating it. And as he drank himself into sleep, staring at an appalling film on the movie channel, he found himself filled with anger and outrage at those furies. And at the one that had played the largest part, the human, inhuman man who had set out most wilfully to wreck whatever it was he had made for and with Octavia; and was forced to recognise that, barring some rather unlikely miracle, he had probably, finally, succeeded. And Tom did not believe in miracles.
Marianne sat on the floor of Romilly’s bedroom; Romilly lay on the bed, looking at her, her large green eyes cloudy with tears and some kind of strange sullen defiance.
Marianne felt very sick. Finally, haltingly, prompted gently by Zoë, who was now asleep herself, released briefly from her own troubles, the story had come out; the terrible session with Stefanidis, his criticism of her, the humiliation, physical and emotional, of the whole, terrible, drawn-out day, culminating in the naked breasts, bared to two men, total strangers, not so dreadful perhaps in absolute terms, but an outrage against someone as innocent, as eager to please as Romilly: and then, as if that was not enough for her to bear, the appalling episode with Serena Fox and her lesbian lover. And then coming home to an empty house, with no one to hold her, comfort her, say there there, it doesn’t matter, you’re quite safe, nothing matters, I’m here.
What kind of mother was she, that she could have allowed even the possibility of such a situation developing: so engrossed in her own affairs – or affair – her own pleasures, her own concerns. While one daughter was running wild in London, committing God knew what crimes, or near-crimes, and another was being confronted by the reality of a world she had no business even to be near, never mind forced into. Briefly, wildly, she contemplated what Alec would have to say to her on the matter of her motherhood now, and shuddered and tried to turn away from it; and then thought that whatever he might say, she deserved it and more.
‘Darling,’ she said rather helplessly, ‘darling, would you like to come down, maybe watch TV with me for a bit?’
‘No,’ Romilly said, still with the strange closed expression. ‘I really don’t feel too good, I’d rather stay up here.’
‘But, Romilly, sweetheart—’
‘Mum, don’t make so much of it. It was no big deal. I’m fine. Stop fussing.’
She sounded like Zoë: older, hostile, difficult; Marianne sighed and turned away from her, looked rather wildly round the room, still a child’s room, with its Roald Dahl books on the shelf, and her noticeboard, covered with tickets to theatres and pop concerts and the teenage balls she had gone to, and postcards and pictures taken in photo booths of herself and her friends, and posters of Leonardo di Caprio and Robbie Williams, and her rollerblades and her riding hat slung untidily into a corner, and the endless collages of family holidays, and the dolls’ house, standing next to the desk. Romilly had always loved that dolls’ house; Alec had bought it for her in America, a lucky find, a house very like the one they stayed in at Martha’s Vineyard every year.
She reached forward now, to close the front door, which was hanging open. Something stopped it.
‘Don’t,’ said Romilly sharply. ‘Leave it alone.’
Marianne didn’t leave it alone. She pushed again, and then when it didn’t yield, she opened it, and against the background of Romilly saying, ‘Mummy, please!’ and feeling sicker than ever, pulled out an almost-empty packet of laxative tablets.
‘Romilly, darling, why on earth were you taking those? Horrible things, for heaven’s sake, couldn’t you have asked me? Why take them? For God’s sake, Romilly, you’ve got to tell me. Got to let me help you.’
And then finally, the spell broke, and Romilly flung herself off the bed and into her arms, and was saying, ‘I had to, I had to.’
‘But, darling, why?’
‘I had this spot. My skin was horrible and my stomach was all bloated, and it was the session. I thought – I thought they’d help. They did.’
‘But, darling, help what?’
‘Help bring it on. My period,’ said Romilly, her voice louder, thick with tears. ‘It was late. Days and days late. I had to do something about it, I had to, it was so terrible, you don’t understand.’
And Marianne sat there, holding Romilly, feeling the sobs shaking her body, feeling more ashamed of herself than she could ever remember, and realising exactly how badly out of order her own life had become.
CHAPTER 40
Playing God is a dangerous game for mortals. It requires breathtaking arrogance, an iron nerve and an absolute determination to see it through, whatever the cost and whatever the consequences. Felix Miller, who possessed all those things, had been playing God with some success; he was lacking, however, in that other crucial quality, granted only to the Almighty; the ability to see what further moves, if any, might need to be made . . .
He simply considered his job done, and well done: Octavia dispatched, alone with her lover, into the loveliness and peace of Barbados; and in the knowledge moreover that her husband was disporting himself in the pleasure-domes of Tuscany with his mistress. He had done that, Felix thought, studying the financial pages that sunny Monday morning; he had created a set of circumstances whereby Octavia could go away, guilt free, knowing that her marriage must be finally and absolutely over. And whereby Tom Fleming had been typecast, correctly of course, but in a manner in which there could be no doubt, as the unarguable villain of the piece. All that was needed now was the divorce to be set in motion, and Octavia would be safe again. There could surely be no possible reason for her to postpone it any longer now: no reason either for him not to ring his solicitor and establish exactly what Octavia should and should not do in order to bring about a legal end to her marriage, as final and unarguable as its emotional counterpart. He picked up the phone and dialled Bernard Moss’s number.
‘We’ll go to Cave Shepherd tomorrow morning,’ said Octavia, ‘to get your shirts. It’s a marvellous shop, a bit like – well, like Harrods.’
‘Sounds my kind of place.’
He grinned at her. They had spent the day at Crane, on the northern side of the island, a glorious white-sanded beach with rolling white-edged turquoise surf. They had taken belly boards and Octavia had tried to teach Gabriel to catch the waves; he had been hopeless at it, missed the moment every time, but he hadn’t minded, had watched her from the beach, laughing, as she rode in through the surf, and felt a stab of something very close to love for her. Afterwards, she lay stretched out on her board, half asleep, her body already turned golden brown, a clutch of rather surprising freckles on her small perfect nose. Octavia would not have been expected to have freckles, Gabriel thought, they were somehow too childlike, too random, for her neat orderly beauty. But they suited her. The sun suited her altogether, Gabriel thought, more than half envious; he had woken pink shouldered and sore, had kept his T-shirt on all morning, even in the sea, feeling slightly foolish and somehow adolescent. He wondered if Tom Fleming burned in the sun and decided it was unlikely.
At lunchtime they went up to the terrace restaurant at the Crane Hotel, set on the cliffs high above the beach, and ordered swordfish salads and fries; while they waited Gabriel had a milk punch.
‘I warn you,’ said Octavia, ‘that might sound innocent, but it’s lethal.’
It was; his head was spinning long before the food arrived.
Later, they swam again, and then she went fast asleep on her board, in the shade of some trees; Gabriel, feeling the heat badly now, walked along the water’s edge, and tried to ignore a determinedly developing headache. He needed some time out of the sun; but she had organised a boat-trip the next day, and was so excited about the wonders it was going to offer that he didn’t have the heart to say he couldn’t go.
The dreaded cocktails had been postponed until the next day: Fergus and the blonde were going to a dinner party that night. For that, at least, Gabriel was grateful.
He had walked as far as he could, stopped by some cliffs jutting far out into the sea, and turned; he swam for a few minutes, trying to get cool. The water was warm as well as wild; his headache eased as he dived under the waves. A quiet evening and he’d be fine tomorrow . . .
‘We’re going to dinner at a restaurant called Pisces tonight,’ said Octavia, sitting up, refreshed from her sleep, waking to his kiss. ‘It goes right out into the sea. You’ll really enjoy it.’
He tried to look enthusiastic but his headache had stabbed back into life. ‘Good. Shall we go back now?’
‘Yes, I think we’d better. You look as if you’ve had quite enough sun. Your face is terribly pink, Gabriel. I wish you’d—’
‘You wish I’d what?’ he said, irritably conscious of his burned face.
‘Wear a hat.’
‘I will tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I did bring one. A panama.’
‘Really? How nice, I love men in panamas. So old-worldish. Come on, let’s get you back. We can have a – well, a rest before we go out.’
She smiled at him, jumped up and kissed him. He knew what she meant, and tried to look enthusiastic, but his headache was so bad when they did get back that all he could do was fall gratefully asleep.
Pisces was a very nice restaurant; cooler now (in spite of wearing his grey flannels), and with several painkillers inside him, Gabriel managed at least to appear to appreciate it. He decided he should stick to water, but Octavia said the wine list was incredible, and he should have at least a glass. Sipping a Californian chardonnay at one of the tables at beach level, looking appreciatively at the menu, he felt almost human again.
Octavia, dressed in a white linen dress, unbuttoned dangerously low to show her brown breasts, smiled at him, picked up his hand and kissed it. ‘I’m enjoying this so much,’ she said. ‘So very much. I hope you are too.’
Gabriel said he was. ‘Much more than I expected,’ he said.
‘Really? I find that mildly insulting.’
