The colossal wreck now as weak as a kitten, as quiet as a mouse. Ozymandias toppled. “Half sunk, a shattered visage lies.” Gloria had been very fond of Shelley when she was younger. She had given Graham a beautifully illustrated Folio Society copy of the collected poems for his sixtieth birthday, on the basis that you should give a present you would like to receive yourself.
Naturally, being Graham, he had misread the poem, seeing only the triumphal hubris of “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: / Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Gloria couldn’t think, offhand, of a present she had ever received from any member of her family that she had actually wanted. Last Christmas, Emily (“and Nick”) bought her a food mixer, an inferior brand to the one she already owned, and Graham gave her a Jenners gift token, which hardly required much thought and had probably been bought by his saleswoman-cum-mistress-cum-would-be-wife, Maggie Louden. Gloria had had no intuition that the woman standing in front of her Christmas tree, waving away a mince pie, was planning to be the next Mrs. Graham Hatter. “The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.”
She drank a cup of tea that a nice nurse brought her and flicked through a copy of the Evening News that she had bought from the shop downstairs. “Police are asking if anyone saw a young woman go into the water.” Her eye was caught by the words “earrings in the shape of crucifixes.” She put her tea down and read the short piece from the beginning again. “Go into the water”-what did that mean?
When she got home, Gloria went down to the basement to set the security system for the night. Something moved on one of the CCTV screens, a pair of eyes glowing monstrously in the night- a fox, a big dog-fox, carrying off the remains of Gloria’s supper from last night. Then, unexpectedly, the screen went blank.
Then all the other screens went blank, one by one. No little ro-bots moving this way and that, keeping their electronic eyes on things. The lights on the alarm system flickered and went out, and then all the electricity in the house failed. This was what it would be like for Graham when he died.
A fuse must have blown, Gloria told herself. Nothing to worry about. She felt her way in the absolute dark of the basement toward the wall where the fuse box was. Then she heard a noise. A footfall, a door opening, a floorboard creaking.
Her heart started thudding so loudly that she thought it must be like a beacon pinpointing her position in the dark. A man had been beaten to death in Merchiston this morning-who was to say that the murderer hadn’t moved on to another suburb on the south side? She wished she had a weapon. She made a mental inventory of what was available. The garden shed provided the biggest arsenal-weed-killer sprays, an ax, the electric hedge trimmer, the strimmer-she imagined you could probably do quite a bit of damage to someone’s ankles with a strimmer. Unfortunately there was no way she could get to the garden shed without passing whoever was in the house. Did they have eyes of diamond and jet, were they as tall as a bear?
She suddenly remembered Maggie Louden’s words: “Is it done yet, is it over? Have you got rid of Gloria?” What if she wasn’t talking about divorce, what if she was talking about murder?
Of course, that was exactly what Graham would do! If he di-vorced Gloria, he would lose half of everything he had, and no way in the world would Graham be prepared to do that, but if Gloria died he could keep everything. It was as melodramatic a concept as anything in Emmerdale yet somehow perfectly credible. He would hire someone-Graham had a way of never getting his own hands dirty. He would pay someone to get rid of her. Or he would use Terry. Yes, that was what he would do, he would use Terry.
Gloria held her hand over her heart in an attempt to muffle its telltale thumping. Another floorboard creaked, much closer this time, and Gloria realized that there was someone standing at the top of the basement stairs, a figure outlined faintly with an aura of moonlight from the atrium skylight in the hall.
The figure started to descend the stairs. Gloria took a deep breath and said stoutly, “I think you should know before you come any farther that I am armed.” A lie, of course, but in these circumstances the truth was hardly a weapon. The figure hesitated, it bent down to get a better view of the basement, and then a fa-miliar voice said, “Hello, Gloria.”
Gloria gave a little scream of horror and said, “I thought you were dead.”
35
When Martin returned to the Four Clans, he found the prison-governor receptionist had been replaced by the night porter from last night. Hadn’t Sutherland said he was on holiday? He handed Martin his key, barely looking up from the Evening News that was spread out on the cheap veneer of the reception counter. A cigarette teetered precariously from the edge of his lip.
“Do you remember me?” Martin asked. “Do you know who I am?”
The night porter tore himself away from the newspaper, an inch of ash dropped from his cigarette. He glanced up at Martin and then, as if seeing nothing of interest, returned to his paper. “Yeah,” he said, turning over a page, “you’re that dead guy, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Martin agreed, “I’m that dead guy.”
THURSDAY
36
Arooster crowed. There was no better alarm clock. He remembered it was Sunday, his favorite day of the week, and he stretched all four limbs luxuriously in the bed. No need to get up and go to work. He was no longer writing, thank God, he had found an odd kind of liberation in donning a suit and tie every weekday morning and commuting up to London to toil in a con-servative office with high ceilings and big old-fashioned desks, a place where the juniors and the secretaries called him “Mr. Canning” and the chairman clapped him on the back and said, “How’s that wonderful woman you married, old chap?” He didn’t know what he did in the office all day, but at lunchtime he went out to a restaurant where the waitresses wore white broidery anglaise aprons and little caps on their heads and brought him oxtail soup and steamed puddings with custard. And in the afternoon, at three on the dot, his secretary (June, or perhaps Angela), a cheerful young woman with crisp shorthand and soft twinsets, brought him a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits.
The rooster didn’t know it was a day of rest. He was soon joined by the other birds, Martin could pick out the thread of the joyful warble of a blackbird from the tapestry of birdsong, but the identity of the other birds in the pattern was a mystery. His (wonderful) wife would know, she was a country girl, born and bred. A farm girl. A wholesome, milk-fed farm girl. He propped himself up on an elbow and studied her wholesome farm-girl face. In repose, she was even more lovely, although it was the kind of loveliness that inspired respectful admiration in other men rather than lust. Even the idea of lust would have sullied her. She was beyond reproach. A strand of her soft brown hair lay across her face. He moved it gently away and kissed the priceless ruby bow of her lips.
He would make her breakfast in bed. A proper breakfast, eggs and bacon, fried bread. For lunch today they would roast a piece of good English beef, meat was still on the ration but the village butcher was a friend. Everyone was their friend. He wondered why he was so frequently a carnivore in this other life.
The morning would follow its usual happy Sunday pattern. When lunch was nearly ready-the gravy thickening, the beef resting-he would laugh (because it was their little joke) and say to her, “A little preprandial, darling?” and bring out the Waterford sherry decanter that had belonged to her parents. Then they would sip their amontillado and sit on the armchairs covered in “StrawberryThief ”and listen to Schubert’s Trout Quintet.