When she tried to smile at me, her lips trembled. I was desolated by something I had not looked for or wanted – an aching flood of tenderness towards her.
‘I remembered then,’ she said, ‘that I had started off being afraid of him.’
The dull blurred Kennedy of every day got in the way so that I could not believe in the reality of those vivid and dangerous memories to which she laid claim. Perhaps that had happened to her too over a long time. If it had, she must have been lonely: married and lonely. She had stopped believing in her memories and then Kilpatrick had come to lodge; ‘Peter’ with his hard good looks and sudden temper. That bastard wouldn’t have hesitated about taking her to bed, and if she had gone I couldn’t feel prim any more or disapproving.
What would the husband of her memories have done, though, if he had found out?
TEN
Muffled against my mid-afternoon pillow, the radio leaked music and then for a while, turn about with the advertisements, an account of the arrival of my father’s Great Man at the city’s top hotel. I had worked as a relief porter at Christmas at Riggs Lodge and it amused me to think how impressed my father would be if I was there still to encounter at close quarters the lofty skeletal figure of the old politician, or get from his own hand a gratuity – some appropriately small coin, of course, since they always get that sort of thing right, those hereditary aristocrats. I thought about that and it stopped being funny and then I fell asleep.
Someone was ringing the front door bell. Late sunlight had slipped from antlers to hooves in the picture above my bed I had christened ‘Son of Stag at Bay.’ The bell went on ringing after any reasonable person would have given up. When I had that thought, an instinct got me out of bed to answer the door.
‘I thought you’d help me,’ Margaret Briody said.
She was in jeans with some kind of tatty shirt hanging over them, and she was the most desirable thing I had ever been close enough to touch.
‘What kind of help?’ I asked.
I sometimes had these bad attacks of caution.
‘Please,’ she said.
My father had advised me about the dangers of being helpful in an undiscriminating sort of way to girls in the big city.
‘Wait here,’ I told her.
‘If you won’t,’ she called after me, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do.’
I went upstairs at the fast limp and collected the stick and my jacket. After a hesitation, I took all three notes out of their hiding place in the shoe under the bed. It was only money. If Paris was worth a mass, my father’s advice was a fair swap for Margaret Briody even in a mess.
She made a forlorn figure standing at the door. A gentleman would have asked her in; but then no one had ever mistaken me for one of those.
‘I don’t think my landlady’s too keen on you,’ I said. ‘We can get a seat in the park. It’s not far.’
Before we got there she had told her story. We sat on a bench near the statue of Carlyle; the massive head emerged out of a column of uncut stone like a tethered lion. Behind us, the river made quiet noises whenever there was a break in the traffic.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘Kilpatrick’s hurt. And you want me to help him?’
‘To help me.’ She was crying again. ‘I took him to Daddy’s yard. It was the only place I could think of. It’s empty because of the holiday.’
‘Why, in God’s name, didn’t you get an ambulance? If he’s hurt, he should be in hospital.’
‘But he wasn’t really bad – not until I moved him. But now he’s lying there and I can’t waken him. I’m frightened.’
‘That’s what I’m telling you – he should be in hospital. What else can I tell you? There isn’t anything I can do.’
‘Help me.’ She touched my arm. ‘If you come with me – and we could get him into the car – and we could take him to the hospital. You’re right – that’s where he should be. Only if we took him up to the door, we wouldn’t have to go in ourselves. You could help me with him. He might not want to go, you see.’
I saw; suddenly, I saw. ‘We take him to hospital,’ I worked it out, ‘and if he doesn’t want to go, I persuade him. But we don’t go in with him, because then we’d have to give our names. We just leave him and drive away. That makes everything lovely. Nobody needs to know that he got himself hurt while he was in your house – for some reason, in your house. Not even Daddy and Mummy since they’re away on holiday. Are you serious?’
Visibly, she decided to ignore any hint of indelicacy in what might have brought Kilpatrick to her house, Daddy being on holiday. Instead, she clung to the point at issue. ‘I’m sure Peter wouldn’t mention our names,’ she said.
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that.
‘I’ve told you what happened.’ When she sobbed, her breasts took big silhouettes out of the evening park. ‘I don’t know why you should want to be nasty to me. I’d gone out to do some shopping. I was going to make him – make him a lovely dinner. And when I came back, he was sitting on the floor in the hall and there was blood— blood—’ Her voice edged towards a hysteria that was only half intended.
‘He’d been shot,’ I said.
She made a movement of protest.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Shot. With a gun. You said he was hurt. Now you’re talking as if he might be dying. He didn’t get into that state falling downstairs. And don’t tell me you live in a bungalow.’ I felt she was capable of anything.
‘He wouldn’t let me phone a doctor. I did want to! But he said it wasn’t serious and he would phone his boss and find out what to do. He made me help him into the living room and then I’d to go outside while he phoned. And then I’d to get him the stuff to make up a parcel and—’
‘You brought it to me,’ I said, ‘just like he asked. What harm had I ever done you?’
The sun was going down the sky and a little wind stirred in our faces.
‘That’s not fair to Peter,’ she said. ‘He didn’t tell me to take the parcel to you. I was to take it to an address he gave me. But I was frightened. He’d used the towel I’d given him for the blood and I’d seen the gun although I said nothing – I didn’t want to make him angry with me.’
‘He was lucky. It didn’t matter how I felt, so I get the gun.’
‘Do you have to talk like that?’ she asked. ‘I didn’t know for sure what he’d put in the parcel. He asked me to take it to this address he gave me and—’
‘What address?’
She could fix those wide violet eyes on you for a long time without blinking. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. There was no way of telling if she was lying.
‘Anyway,’ she sighed, ‘I couldn’t find it. He’d given me directions, but I got them muddled. I didn’t think it could be the right address, the streets were so awful. And then this man started following me. I couldn’t take the parcel back to Peter. You don’t know what a temper he has. And then I remembered you were in the same lodgings as Peter. You always look as if you know what to do – You were the only person I could think of when I was so frightened.’
The brightest woman in the world couldn’t have found a better method of persuading me.
‘Stop crying,’ I said in my rough, competent way. ‘We’ll work it out.’ Something struck me. ‘When you gave me the parcel, you said that Brond was going to come for it. Why did you say that?’