‘So. .?’
‘So. .?’
‘So what was it exactly that you found when you got back?’
‘Somebody broke into Kevern’s cottage while we were away.’
‘Was there damage?’
‘No. They’d tidied it up.’
‘That’s an unusual break-in. Was much taken?’
‘As far as I could tell — as far as Kevern could tell — nothing.’
‘Could you have been mistaken?’
Ailinn was not prepared to tell Ez that Kevern’s rug had been straightened, because that would have necessitated her explaining why it was always left rumpled, and that would have been to betray her lover to her friend. She trusted Ez but that was not the point. You don’t trust anyone with another person’s secrets.
‘He’s very alert to the slightest change,’ she said. ‘He knows if anyone’s leaned on his gate or sniffed the scent out of one of his roses.’
‘Roses? You never said he was a gardener.’
‘He isn’t. I was being facetious. I’m sorry, I’m upset.’
‘Do you know what I think?’ Ez said. She was a do you know what I think kind of a woman. She assumed people went to her to hear homilies. As, indeed, they often did. ‘I think you were both tired after a long drive. And if Kevern is as sensitive to any vibration in the vicinity of his cottage as you say, he was probably anxious the whole time you were away and simply found what he’d feared finding.’
‘You are very sure of everything,’ Ailinn said. She felt she’d been forced to take a side and the only side she could take was Kevern’s.
Ez, she noticed, coloured. For all her intrusiveness, she tried to take a relaxed attitude to Ailinn’s worries, half listening, half humouring, in the way of an older person, a concerned relation or a teacher, who knew that things usually worked out tolerably well in the end. The better a friend you were, the more cheerful a front you presented, was Ez’s philosophy. A cup of tea, a moral lesson, a hug. She was doctorly, motherly, and even a touch professorial, at the same time. Ailinn had liked the contrarieties of her personality from the moment she met her in the reading group. She dressed modestly, in button-up cardigans and long skirts but liked hobbling about, for short periods, on high heels. Crimson high heels, as though she kept an alternative version of herself under her skirt. She had the quiet, respectful manner of a librarian, and no sense of humour to speak of, but if anything was said which she thought might be designed to amuse her she would choke with laughter, spluttering like a schoolgirl, or throwing back her head and showing how beautiful, before it lost its smoothness, the arc of her throat had once been. She was on her own now but she hadn’t always been, Ailinn surmised. There’d been some personal tragedy in her life. A man she’d loved had run away or died. She carried a torch for someone. She burned a little candle in her heart. That was what the crimson shoes were doing — keeping a spark alive. Ailinn even wondered if this was his cottage, whoever he was, or whether they’d had their affair here, in this dripping corner of Paradise Valley where mushrooms would grow out of your shoes if you didn’t wear them for a day. Was that why she’d asked Ailinn along — so that she had reason to hold herself together, so that she wouldn’t give way to morbidity? In which case Ailinn’s falling in love with Kevern and all but moving out of the Valley was inconsiderate. Did that explain the unwonted attentiveness of Ez’s manner tonight, the way she appeared to be counting syllables and listening to pauses? Did she want to hear that something was amiss between them?
‘No, I’m not sure of anything,’ she said. ‘I was just looking at the situation from all angles.’
‘What if it’s the police?’ Ailinn wondered aloud. ‘What if they really do suspect him?’
‘But nothing was taken from the cottage, you say.’
‘Well that’s what Kevern said. But he didn’t exactly give himself time to check.’
‘You can usually tell.’
‘Can you?’
‘You can usually tell when something of your own, something that matters to you, has been taken. You just know.’
Ailinn looked at her. What a lot Ez suddenly just knew. She took another sip of the brandy. ‘What did you do, Ez?’ she asked. ‘What did you do before you became book-group police?’
Ez laughed — but not, on this occasion, like a young girl. ‘That’s an amusing concept,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you didn’t think I was policing any of the meetings you came to. I just chose the books.’
‘Exactly. You policed what we read. Were you a different kind of policeman before that?’
‘I was an administrator.’
‘Administering what?’
‘Oh, this and that. I kept an eye open.’
‘On whom?’
‘Good question. Other people who were keeping an eye open.’
Perhaps it was the brandy talking, but Ailinn suddenly propped her elbows on the table, supported her head in her hands and stared hard into her friend’s face. ‘What’s this all about, Ez?’ she asked.
‘This?’
‘Why did you bring me here? Why were Kevern and I thrown into one another’s arms? Why did you force me to ring him when we’d broken up? Why did someone break into his house while we were away?’
‘A: I brought you here because you were — because you are — my friend. B: I am not aware that you and Kevern were thrown into each other’s arms. I thought you said it was love at first sight. C: As for Kevern’s house — I have no idea why someone would have broken in, just as you have no idea whether anyone actually did.’
‘Then why are you annoyed with me?’
‘I am not in the slightest bit annoyed with you.’ She reached out to stroke Ailinn’s cheek. ‘I am concerned about you, that’s all.’
‘Then why are your hands cold?’
‘I didn’t know they were.’
‘And why are you concerned? You are never concerned for me. Not in this way. How many times have you told me I was someone in whom you had absolute faith? And what did that mean, anyway?’
Perhaps it was the brandy talking again, but she began to cry. Not a flood, just a trickle of soft tears that were gone almost as soon as they appeared.
‘You’re very tired. I think you should go to bed,’ Ez said.
‘Yes, I think so too. But I won’t sleep. I will lie there all night wondering.’
‘Wondering who broke in?’
‘Wondering whether he was serious when he spoke about leaving the country.’
‘Kevern said he was going to leave the country?’
‘Not exactly. But he allowed the idea to float before me, like a threat.’
‘We need to talk,’ Ez said. And this time had Ailinn felt her hands she would have discovered they weren’t just cold, they were frozen.
THREE. The Women’s Illness
Monday 25th
NOT NORMALLY A diary day, but there are things I have to get down before they escape me.
Bloody Gutkind!
Looking on the bright side, as it is my nature to do, the decline of Gutkind’s fortunes, following his most recent act of lumbering zealotry, must herald an improvement in mine. Funny how fate — the divine juggler — balances the fortunes of men with such precision, so that with each rise or fall we vacate space, not just for any old rival, but for someone we have a particular reason for hating. It was to yours truly, anyway, that the powers that be turned to minimise the damage Gutkind was causing. First of all the clown needed to be called off Kevern Cohen, and who better than me, given that I’d taught him briefly (Gutkind, that is) as a mature student, impossible as it is to believe that so unimaginative a man could ever have flirted with the idea of a second career in the Benign Visual Arts, though the Benign Visual Arts, I have to say, did not flirt back — who better, I repeat, than someone with my authority to remind him of the limits of his? Nothing too heavy-handed, just a quiet, entre nous suggestion — implicating no one higher up — that he back off. Why break a butterfly on a wheel and all that. Since you’re acquainted with him, Professor, you can intimate our disfavour, was the flavour (the flavour of their disfavour is nice, don’t you think?) of their communication to me. My knowing Kevern as well, of course, gave me extra ammunition. ‘I’ve been watching Cohen for some time,’ I could get away with saying to Detective Inspector Gutkind, ‘and nothing I have seen suggests he would harm a hair of a woman’s head, let alone do what was done to poor Lowenna Morgenstern, so please don’t bother your own pretty little head about him any further. Kevern Cohen? Mr Lovespoon himself! Are you joking? A policeman of all people should know there are some men who are incapable of committing a murder because they know they’d never get the blood off their hands. Can you imagine our friend Kevern “Coco” Cohen scrubbing underneath his fingernails? He’d be there, crouched over himself, washing until Doomsday. Don’t make me laugh, Detective Inspector. The country’s crawling with ruffians. Go bag yourself one of those.’