As to the rest of it …
Twenty-four years of a marriage that had decently laid itself to rest. A mixture of rapaciousness and boredom that had driven him to find a solace for which he no longer had the inclination or the need. Why couldn’t she accept that? Let go. That eternal whining, you promised, you promised. Of course he had promised. Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? A married man. Senior consultant. Seven, eight years ago when it had started, he would have promised her anything. Had. Now he would promise her anything to leave him alone, only she no longer believed him. Not without words on paper, evidence, commitment. All the times you said what we might do if only you were free.
Well, now he was free and fully intending to stay that way.
She was waiting by his car again and he considered abandoning it, heading back to the hospital and calling a taxi, but she had seen him.
“Helen,” Salt said, resting his briefcase on the roof of his car, fingers in his jacket pocket circling around the keys, “how long do you think you’re going to keep this up?”
She had changed out of her uniform into a white blouse and navy cardigan, a calf-length pleated skirt and, unbelted at the waist, a camel coat. Her hands were small, tight fists. “For as long as it takes,” she said.
“And if I say no,” Salt asked.
“That’s easy,” Helen said. “You know what I’ll do then.”
He drew his breath. In the masked fluorescence of the car park, her skin looked sallow and old. “All right,” he said, “no. The answer’s no. Once and for all, no.”
Helen Minton slid a half-step sideways and steadied herself against the side of the car. Her mouth opened and there was a sound, harsh and hissing, like stale air making its escape. She almost slipped as she turned away, recovered, and walked quickly between the avenues of other cars. Salt hesitated, started after her without conviction, and when she was lost to sight behind the door leading to the lifts, he stopped.
He had done it: said it.
Only then, quite still, did he realize the extent to which his own breathing had accelerated. He made himself stand for a full minute before heading back towards his own car.
Fitting the keys in the lock, fumbling a little, his head suddenly came up, alert. A movement off to his right, behind him. Moving then stopping. Salt looked off along the line of roofs, shadows. His first thought had been that it was Helen, calmed down, back to make her peace, apologize. He could see nobody: no doors opened, engines fired.
“Hello?” Salt’s voice was oddly uncertain, hollow.
Then there was somebody, someone he knew, a fellow consultant making his way with crisp steps towards his Rover, waving: “Hello, Bernard. Communing with the old carbon monoxide?”
Salt let himself into the car and waited until the Rover had slid from its space, reversing out and following it towards the exit.
By the time Calvin Ridgemount got home it was late. He let himself in, dropping his sports bag at the top of the stairs before going into the kitchen. There were two cartons of milk in the fridge, one already opened, so he opened the other and drank the contents down in four long swallows. From the living room he could hear the sound of recorded voices and soundtrack music, his father’s laughter.
Calvin smeared plum jam on two digestive biscuits and put them together, taking a bite as he went towards the back of the house.
His father was sitting back on the settee, one leg hooked over the side, can of Red Stripe in his hand, laughing at something Barbra Streisand had just said to what’s-his-name? The one whose daughter married the tennis player Calvin couldn’t stand. It didn’t matter. He had seen it before, the film, something really stupid about boxing. His father had fetched it from the corner shop, two videos for a pound if you brought them back next morning, but this was being shown live, on TV, now.
“Where’ve you been?” his father asked, still smiling at what he’d seen.
“I told you,” Calvin said. “Out.”
“Where you going now?”
“To bed.”
In his room, Calvin tossed the bag towards the far wall, below the window. Without bothering to switch on the light, he slipped Fair Warning from its case and switched the cassette player on. Lying back on his bed, he stared up at the ceiling, eyes growing accustomed to the blackness, watching the stars come out, one by one.
Twenty-five
Time was, Resnick thought, you would have walked into Manhattan’s in the happy hour, and said the joint was jumping. Of course, he didn’t know that for a fact. Just another bit of America that had found its way into his life via a record label. Thirty-seven or — eight. Herman Autrey on trumpet, Gene Sedric on tenor. Fats Waller and his Rhythm. Resnick had an uncle, a tailor with thumbs like sheet metal and fingers like silk; instead of coming to England in the months before the outbreak of the war, he had shipped out with his family to the States. Haif a dozen of them sleeping toe to tail in a tenement off Hester Street. After VJ Day, the uncle had uprooted himself again, more opportunities in a smaller pond. Time had proved him wrong.
But Resnick could remember, as a boy, climbing to the upper floor of the house in St Anne’s and poring over the enormous pile of 78s, black and brittle in brown covers of paper or card printed over with slogans for Vocalion, HMV. Sitting there, cross-legged, on his own, he had read the labels with fascination, inventing stories about the owners of those names before ever hearing their music: Count, Duke, Fats, Willie the Lion, Kid and King.
When first he heard them played, his friends were beginning to listen to-what? — Tommy Steele, Bill Haley and the Comets. Resnick had sat in hushed silence with black tea and dry cake while his uncle handsewed buttonholes and hems and his cousin swayed her legs softly to the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, four voices and a guitar. After a while, his uncle would tap his thimble on the table and wink at Resnick and then they would listen to Mildred Bailey, Billie Holiday, Luis Russell’s “Call of the Freaks,” Fats Waller and his Rhythm, “The Joint is jumpin’.”
“You came back,” Maura said, as Resnick tried to edge into a space at the bar.
Her hair seemed to be suspended around her head, a mixture of fine gauze and candy floss. Since Resnick had last seen her, its color had shaded from auburn towards orange. She was wearing a halter top, bright flowers on a black background. Rings on her fingers, earrings that brushed against her shoulders as she turned.
She set a bottle and a glass down in front of him and inclined her head towards the far side of the room, past the console where a hip black DJ was playing something Resnick was relieved not to recognize.
“I know,” Resnick said. He had spotted Groves as he walked in, sitting at a table against the wall with a couple of friends, back towards the door.
“You’re not going to arrest him? In here?”
“What for?”
When Maura shrugged, her engraved metal earrings jingled. “I’ve never seen anyone arrested, only on television.”
“That’s where it happens most.”
She went back to serving customers and Resnick poured his beer, drank enough to get the remainder of the bottle into the glass and stood away from the bar, between there and the steps, occasionally glimpsing Paul Groves’s prematurely balding head through the mass of drinkers. When he had finished his drink and Groves had shown no sign of leaving, Resnick moved to him around the edge of the dance floor and tapped him on the shoulder.