Harry prepared his recorder and notes, invited her to talk about Mamoon, and then, when she said nothing, passed over £50.
‘Nobody asked me anything before,’ she said. ‘I was thinking, how clever is this Harry, that he doesn’t go to the most obvious person — the one who saw everything.’
‘From day one, please,’ he said. ‘How you met.’
The talking went on until she emerged, skinned. She had nursed Peggy; she had cared for Mamoon in his despair. He had slept with her twice, after she had got into his bed and he hadn’t turned her away. ‘He couldn’t love me,’ she said, ‘but I had been celibate in terms of pleasure and feeling. But you don’t know anything about failure or having nothing.’
Later, the new bride, Liana, landed in the yard. Ruth knew that if she wanted to keep her job she had to seal her mouth and unpack Liana’s bags. Ruth knew that women now had careers ‘and all that’, but she had never been able to rise above her station. She was where she was before, if not worse, and certainly older; the blacks had more opportunities, the Somalis better housing: they were sitting on golden cushions eating caviar with platinum spoons. Nothing had improved for her and her class, and she liked a drink, that was all.
As Harry packed up his notes, she said, ‘Will I definitely be in the book?’
‘Of course.’
She clapped her hands. ‘And you’ll put in that he loved me all along?’
‘The two of you didn’t get anywhere as lovers, Ruth. He left for Europe.’
‘Exactly — because I’d been telling him that Peggy might be the sweetest person to talk to, but she had been a vampire for years, drinking his life-blood and giving him complaints and guilt. And some mornings, after she’d died, he had become so dark, I was worried he would go and hang himself in the barn. I believed I’d find him dead. So he went away. And then Liana infiltrated him, and forced him away from us for ever.’ She leaned towards Harry and hissed in his ear. ‘He regrets it. For me it was, at first, the best time. Those memories are my highlight. He knows he could have been happy with just us, the family who adored him. I know he still loves and wants us. Perhaps Liana should have an accident.’ Ruth took his hands across the table. ‘Will there be pictures? If I find one, of Mamoon and all of us together in the garden, so happy, will you promise to put it in? Will Liana try to stop it?’
‘Let me see it,’ he said.
Alice texted to suggest that she and Harry might stay one more night, since she didn’t want to drive back in the storm which had been predicted. Harry wasn’t keen, but didn’t think it would be a problem as long as he could begin to write up the Ruth material. He drove Ruth home; she was weeping and he helped her inside, to Scott. ‘You’ve emptied me,’ she cried. ‘I lost my battles with life, didn’t I? Who will look after me in my old age?’
When Harry got out of the car in the yard, he stood still for a moment. He heard a raised voice: Liana’s. Mamoon’s reply followed, and there was fury in his harsh tone. Harry became sure a number of things were being smashed. He hurried across and found that, unusually, Mamoon’s door was open, and Alice seemed to have backed out into the rain with her hand over her mouth.
Inside, Liana was standing at Mamoon’s desk. She had already swept from it soiled wine glasses, cups full of pens, CDs and newspapers, while strongly informing Mamoon that he was a bastard and a son of a bitch.
Mamoon said, ‘You’re killing me with this destructiveness!’
‘You seem strong enough to entertain a girl in there!’
‘Entertainment? We are talking about important matters for my work, and for her life.’
Liana picked up the stick with the rabbit head and approached him with it. ‘Why don’t I take your stick and tap out some nice words on your forehead? I could hear you from the kitchen laughing together — while I make your favourite spicy parsnip soup! You disappear to be an artist, and leave me alone all day! You absolutely forbid me to enter the room. Then you let her in.’
‘She is like a daughter to me — to both of us! You know that perfectly well.’
‘You filthy man, what’s wrong with me, why can’t I be your daughter? And then you condemn me for talking to Harry!’
‘I do?’
‘You accuse me of flirting like a fishwife and plumping up my breasts pneumatically! And then, finally, you deliberately and cruelly deny me the thing I want most in the world!’
‘What, Liana, please, you know I’ll do anything for you!’
‘A place in Chelsea! You’re too mean to spend the money.’
‘Don’t raise my blood pressure or I’ll slap your fat face, you ignorant bitch, and knock your aura right into the gutter.’
‘You’re not man enough.’
‘Get out!’
‘What did you say?’
‘No, no, Liana, sorry, you know that though I find you irritating, I love you,’ he said, putting out his arms and stretching across the desk towards her.
‘If you love me,’ she said, moving away from him, ‘you will agree to the following. I was dancing with Alice to Abba in the barn a few weeks ago. Julia was the DJ. We were in something of a stupor. I had a flash of inspiration. I’m going to write a self-help book.’
Mamoon looked startled, but, in the circumstances, could only continue to listen.
She said, ‘It’ll be about me, my story.’
‘What exactly is your story?’
‘Don’t you know?’ When he shook his head, she leaned across the desk. ‘An attractive, feisty woman captures the heart of an artistic powerhouse, revives his career while dealing with his impossible ego, and helps turn him into a monument while running a country estate.’
He said, ‘The story you describe is a miracle, and its heroine clearly a parasite. Where is the self-help in that?’
‘It will include good advice on how to seduce a man and get him to marry you.’
‘It’s true, you have mainly used me for money,’ he said.
‘I wish I had,’ she said. ‘It was what people advised me to do.’ Liana turned to Harry. ‘Didn’t you say the book was a brilliant start, Harry, when I showed it to you a couple of weeks ago?’
‘Well, yes, but I only glanced through it, Liana—’ Harry began.
Mamoon said, ‘Is it true that your filthy stain extends even this far?’
Liana said, ‘You depress me, Mamoon. What really is the point of you?’ She was looking at his desk, as was Harry, who noticed a journal held open by a couple of beach stones. Next to it were some white pages with Mamoon’s scrawl across them. ‘Give me that diary to read,’ she said. ‘We’ll go through it together. We don’t have secrets, do we?’
He snorted with laughter. But not for long. Liana picked up a full cup of the tea which Julia brought Mamoon continuously throughout the day, and tipped some of it over the journal, and the rest over the other writing. They watched the writer’s words suddenly dissolve and disappear into a puddle on the desk, dripping onto the floor.
Liana leaned her hip against his desk, and tried to shove it to one side. ‘I am not your fan, and I don’t want to be just a sucking and shopping spouse! I am moving in here, beside you. You can advise me on the finest words.’
Mamoon said, ‘It’s laughable, us side by side like school children. I will never come in here again.’
‘Wherever you are, I will be next to you.’
‘Then I will kill myself.’
She laughed wildly. ‘You lack the courage.’
‘To get away from you, I will do it.’
She picked up a rock he used as a paperweight. ‘Why don’t I insert this into the middle of your face?’
She even threw it, and not limply; he put up his hand and it bounced away. If he hadn’t laughed, she wouldn’t have taken a step forward and struck him across the face. One of her rings must have caught him, because suddenly there was a line of blood and his cry, when he realised he’d been slashed.