CHAPTER TWENTY TWO: THE QUEEN’S HOUSE
Hell hath no fury like a woman violated, especially when the woman concerned is a very rich New York princess. Shosanah travelled back to L’Amadou, the Chapman’s French home, in a state of barely controlled shock, occasionally breaking into bursts of tears and choking sobs. Delia and Anne sat either side of her, each holding an arm, because they both feared she might do something rash. Levon sat just behind them, murmuring soothingly.
‘I want to get outa this place, I want to get home to America.’ Shosanah’s voice wailed the words in a witch’s incantation. ‘I want to go home, I want to get outa here.’ For a while her screech was almost unbearable, rising and falling in the long unbroken sound of a saw in a woodmill. But then she seemed to lose breath, and subsided into a long, low, continuous moaning.
Levon tried to explain to her that they must first pick up her clothes and her baggage, and collect her maid Louise, but she did not seem to hear him, repeating her words again and again, occasionally staring out of the minibus window as though expecting to find herself driving down Broadway. Her blonde hair was now dishevelled, hanging down either side of her face like Medusa’s snakes, or a wig that had been caught in a rainstorm, and Levon noted, with just a touch of revulsion, that she looked very haggard and worn. He was not sure that even Hymie Berger made her an attractive proposition any longer. She had fallen to pieces too quickly, and he had a vision of spending the rest of his life picking up bits. He sighed. He had made too many mistakes about women in his lifetime. All he needed was someone with an active mind, someone to care for him, who would think him wholly wonderful, and follow him through life with devotion.
He joined Harry on the terrace after Anne and Delia had shepherded Shosanah away to her room, sipping at a glass of marc as he waited for her to be changed out of her golden dress and prepared for her return to New York. He was not fond of marc, but it served well enough as an anaesthetic.
‘You want me to drop you off in London?’
Harry nodded. The weekend had blown up, and melted in tears. He saw no point in staying. James and Delia and the boys could fly home commercial.
‘Bad time for us both, huh?’
Harry swallowed a large mouthful of marc. At least he still had Doreen waiting for him.
He arrived back at Canary Wharf in the early hours of Sunday morning. It was a good way past midnight when he opened the flat door, and he moved quietly. He expected to find Doreen sleeping, perhaps already in bed, or possibly curled up on his sofa. But he could find her nowhere. He became increasingly worried, and began to search through his flat.
He found her farewell in his bathroom, scrawled boldly in bright red lipstick across the mirror. The lipstick looked like something that Sylvia had left behind, because Doreen never used any. Just one word. ‘Bye.’
He also found a sheet of paper tucked under his pillow. ‘Found a nice boy, hope you find somebody too.’
Doreen had totally cleared all her possessions, including all the clothes he had bought her. Suspicion flooded his mind, welling up like a fount of insidious poison, and he hurried into the small room that he kept as his office. He had a nice little bureau with a drawer holding a red silk purse filled with pink grannies, together with a small collection of five hundred euro notes, maybe four or five thousand pounds in all, that he kept for emergencies, because credit cards were not always an answer. Doreen knew of the money, because she had seen him take it. He trusted her. He found the drawer empty.
Harry sat down at his kitchen table, and buried his head in his hands. Delia’s words rose in his mind to haunt him, and he knew that he would never be able to look his daughter again in the face without feeling a fool, and an old fool into the bargain. He found a bottle of genever, and filled a glass, although he knew that he would suffer sadly on waking, and sipped at it gloomily. No fool like an old fool. The thought ran through his mind like Shosanah’s wailing. He had been so happy. He thought he had been so happy. He thought back on all the crumpling he had enjoyed, and all the dreams he had built into airy castles, and the rosy pictures he had painted, preening himself like an idiot. No fool like an old fool. The accountant streak in him rose ignominiously, and he struggled to focus, and count the number of times he had enjoyed himself with Doreen, and what he had spent on her, and the relative cost of each occasion, taking his spending divided by his bonking, and his calculations led to nothing but bitterness. No fool like an old fool. The words hammered away in his skull like a tocsin. Money was a very little consideration, when compared with pride and self-respect. No fool like an old fool. The thought fashioned itself into a mirror in his mind, and he saw himself pictured cruelly, and despised himself.
He poured more genever, and perhaps more again, and woke some time in the night to find himself crumpled uncomfortably in his kitchen chair, and staggered to his bed. It was the bed that he had shared with Doreen, but now he was alone, and his loneliness confronted him, and mocked him. No fool like an old fool. He managed to take off his shoes, but then slumped onto the bed fully clothed, and slept.
He woke late on Sunday morning, and the flat was silent around him. He closed his eyes and dozed fitfully, and then woke again, feeling crushed and decidedly secondhand. For a while he lay stretched out on his bed, feeling wholly sorry for himself, and then the practical side of his nature began to assert itself. There was no point in feeling miserable, he had made a fool of himself. An old fool. He must start again. He rolled off the bed, to sit on the edge in his crumpled shirt and trousers, and began to marshall his thoughts. He must clean himself up, and make some coffee, hot and black and really strong, shave, and have a shower, and find a clean shirt and slacks, if Doreen had left him his clothing. The thought made him wince. He had been a fool. An old fool. The thought pierced him like a stiletto.
Some time later he felt a little better, or perhaps a little less hungover. There must always be something very restorative in a thorough cleansing. A hot shower can sluice troubles away, and a smooth chin and upper lip mark a transition from primitive degradation. He drank strong coffee, and found his clothes undisturbed. Doreen had taken nothing from him but what he had bought for her, and his money, and perhaps his self-respect. He chose a black shirt and black chinos, to fit with his mood, checked to see that his shoes were still well polished, and found some eggs in his fridge. He winced now and then from the aftermath of his hangover, but the pain in his head had begun to ebb. He fried the eggs, and drank more coffee, and decided to go out and buy himself a Sunday paper. He needed to escape into settings created by other people.
The Sunday Times was an ocean of boredom, page after page of futility. Harry scanned his way through it, reading or two political stories, and glanced at the long-legged colour supplement cuties, but they were nothing but empty temptation. He was stuck on his own. He glanced at the theatre ads, but it was Sunday, and theatres were all closed. He glanced at the cinemas, but nothing took his fancy.
He glanced at the concerts, and took a deep breath. Musica Ristorata planned an early evening venue at The Queen’s House in Greenwich, with a programme that included Salieri, and the overtures to Vivaldi’s operas, and a piano concerto by Paisiello.
He picked up his mobile, to punch out the box office number. A languid voice answered. He took a deep breath. Anne had never shown much interest in music, viewing it essentially as background audio wallpaper, something to set a mood, though she made an exception for ‘God Save the Queen’, and also for the ‘Marseillaise’. Doreen had strictly been a Capitol Radio girl. But Harry collected Vivaldi CDs, and the central adagio from Griselda now echoed in his mind, in a bitter-sweet recall of all his recent hopes.
‘Do you still have seats?’
‘You can sit where you like.’ The languid voice seemed to come from another dimension, as though opening a door into a hidden world.
Harry chose a seat near the back, where he could be private with his sorrows, and paid by credit card. Fortunately Doreen had not cleaned him out completely.
He dozed again, to wake slumped on his sofa. His head was thumping, his mouth wholly dry, and he was thoroughly uncomfortable. He looked at his watch. He had two and a half hours before the concert began. He thought of eating, but had no real appetite, though he felt he should have something, to allay any pangs of hunger that might come later. He explored his kitchen, and found a small bowl of salad and a plastic container of feta cheese. Doreen must have bought them.
For a moment he thought of consigning both straight to his trash can. But food is food, and a practical man is ever a practical man, and he had no wish to eat out, not all on his own, not the way he felt. He opened his freezer, to find a packet of wholemeal pitta breads, and the sight brought a lump into his throat. The breads and the feta and the salad were Doreen food, weapons in an ongoing struggle to maintain a teenage figure and avoid putting on weight. Life could have been just so very nice, but then it had all blown apart.
He put a couple of pitta breads under the grill, and made himself a fresh pot of coffee, and stood watching the breads puff up. There was something about small mundane tasks that provided an anchor to normality, a lifeboat when everything was troubling. He could drink more ginievre, or scotch, or armagnac; he had a kitchen cupboard stuffed full of bottles for social occasions, and plenty of wine and French beer into the bargain. But he had no desire to succeed one hangover with another. He ate at his kitchen table, and his eating again conjured up memories, but he realised when he tried to picture Doreen seated facing him that she had already begun to fade, because his memories were things from the past.
The Queen’s House forms part of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, south of the Thames, a couple of stops from Canary Wharf on the Docklands Light Railway. Inigo Jones built it for Anne of Denmark, queen to James I, early in the seventeenth century, modelling it on a Medici villa in Italy. Legend has it that James paid the bill after swearing at his wife in public, angry that she had accidentally shot one of his favourite hounds during a hunt.
Harry arrived with time to spare, and stood enjoying the late afternoon sun on the terrace at the front of the house. People began to arrive in a trickle, gathering in pairs and small groups, and he walked around to the colonnaded arcade at the side, linking the house to the old Royal Naval College. He still had a thick head, and his heart was broken. He did not want people around him.
More people trickled along the arcade, and he stood on the edge, with a pillar at his back. A woman passed him, pushing a wheelchair, and he watches her with detachment. She seemed careworn, leaning forward over the chair as she pushed it, and the wheelchair held a man, the remains of a man, covered to his waist with a blanket. He did not appear to have any expression. Perhaps he was sleeping. The woman turned to look at Harry as she passes, and smiled at him quickly. It was an expression of friendship, perhaps from one music lover to another, but something flickered in him at her smile, reaching out from her to touch him, and he watched her as she pushed on, and wondered idly, for a moment, whether he should help her. She might have been in her early or mid thirties, with a pleasant, open face and golden hair. He could not tell whether it was natural or perhaps out of a bottle. But he did nothing. He was suffering too much.
Then he glanced at his watch. It was time for him to take his seat. He walked along the arcade, and found the woman struggling to manoeuvre her wheelchair up some steps. She looked up at him, and there was something pleading in her eyes, as though begging him to help her, but fearing that he might not.
Harry took the front of the wheelchairchair, lifting it with both hands, and between them they struggled up the steps, one at a time, until the wheelchair was safe on level ground.
The woman smiled again. ‘Thank you. Sometimes it’s hard.’
They both hesitated. Harry saw that she had greenish eyes, and might have counted as good-looking, had she not seemed so careworn.
The man in the wheelchair began to grunt, in a series of disjointed sounds, and she bent to soothe him. ‘Somebody helped me get you up the steps, Daddy. I’m just thanking him.’
She smiled at Harry. ‘He worries. He’s had a series of strokes, and he’s terrified of going into hospital. He probably thinks you’re some kind of para-medic.’
Harry looked at the man in the wheelchair, and he was looking at a descent into a kind of hell, a place where consciousness was only partial, and security rested solely in the hands of others. He felt a little ashamed of his own self-pity. He nodded. ‘I hope he enjoys the music.’
He found his seat easily enough, and looked around. The concert audience seemed very dedicated, intelligent looking men with sad eyes and long noses, accompanied by women with short mannish haircuts who might have been schoolteachers. Some of the younger women might have been interesting, but they all sat upright on their spindly little gilt chairs with closed expressions. It was plainly a serious concert for people taking music very seriously. Harry would have preferred something more in the spirit of the eighteenth century, with people wandering around, and talking together, and a nice buffet at the back of the hall with bottles to water the music.
The musicians were equally serious. Harry closed his eyes, allowing the music to sweep him into a land where dreams paint all the pictures, and strangely, although Doreen swam up into his consciousness, he realised that now she had greenish eyes.
The music stopped for an interval, and a voice announced sonorously that wine would be served in an adjoining room. Harry joined a queue, to be served with a glass of something white that tasted oaky, and perhaps Australian. People stood in little clumps, discussing the concert, but he could not see the woman with the wheelchair. He returned to the door leading into the hall, and saw her seated on the far side. She lifted her hand to wave to him, and he returned to the bar, queueing again to collect three glasses of white wine and a tray.
Green eyes smiled up at him as he placed the tray on an empty chair, but she shook her head. ‘Daddy can’t drink.’
Harry hunched his shoulders. ‘Can you?’
She lowered her eyes. ‘I can. But it’s not very fair.’
The man in the wheelchair began to grunt again, and she stroked the side of his face.
‘Doctors say he should stay in, and take things quietly.’ She was silent for a moment, not looking at Harry, speaking as though to herself. ‘We go on from one day to the next, and I’m never quite sure when he’s with me. But he does like music.’
Harry nodded. He would have liked to have done something helpful, to show his sympathy. He was coming through pain of his own, but in nothing like the same measure. ‘Ill give you a hand to get him down the steps again, when the concert was over.’ He picked up the tray.
‘No, I will drink with you.’ The woman’s voice stopped him. She took a glass from the tray, looking at him over the rim. ‘I don’t get out very often.’
He waited for her to drink. She smiled again, but did not speak, and he took the tray back to the bar. The music began again, and he found himself floating away once more, back into his daydreams. Life was nice when dreams prevailed, and nobody was bitter. He wondered whether he dealt Anne a bad hand. But Anne had merely regarded him as a provider, whilst Doreen had been youth, and action, and desire. He had no desire to grow old, watching Anne painting and presiding over village fetes in Tithing St. Mary and Provence. He wanted to be busy, finding possible targets, assembling possible deals, locking things into place. It was what pleased him best, what he was made for. The woman at the press conference had called him a corporate executioner. The sobriquet had seemed a little unfair, a little wide of the mark. But he certainly enjoyed executing, in the sense of carrying things through from conception to completion. Perhaps in a way she had been right.
The concert comes to an end, and he applauded, but his mind was not in his hands. He saw the woman with green eyes get to her feet, and raised his hand, and saw her return his gesture.
Manoeuvering a wheelchair down several stairs was very much easier than going up. Harry helped carry the chair down, and hesitated. He did not know what he wanted, but he wanted something. A sign, perhaps, to ease his loneliness.
The woman smiled at him. Perhaps she was also waiting.
‘Will you be alright, now?’ He looked at her and knew his eyes were seeking comfort. But he also wanted to provide comfort.
She nodded, but did not reply.
He knew he must speak, or lose her. ‘Can I see you again?’
‘Do you want to?’ Her eyes skimmed over the man in the wheelchair, including him in any possible development. ‘I don’t get out a great deal.’
Harry held her eyes with his own. At that moment he just wanted something to dispel his depression and loneliness, the warmth of a human contact, the feeling that he had done a good deed and made a friend. The future would look after itself. He might have liked to invite her back to Canary Wharf, had she been on her own. But she was not alone, and her consent was sufficient. He took a card with his name and telephone number from his wallet. ‘Will you call me tomorrow, if you have a spare moment?’
She smiled again, and this time her eyes came to life. ‘I will. But you don’t know who I am. My name is Eleanor. Eleanor Manston.’
Suddenly Harry felt uplifted, and held out his hand, and they shook hands, and it was a very formal exchange, but perhaps also a start. For there is often something embedded in an encounter that triggers a spark. Sometimes the spark falls on damp wood, and fizzles away into oblivion. Sometimes it catches dry tinder, and a wind fans a blaze. He smiled. He was impetuous by nature, and always guided by hope, for hope was an eternal force, with every day a new day, and the future might well bury the past.
It was now growing late on Sunday evening, and men elsewhere were also taking stock. Bill Grant and Jack Carnes were sharing a lugubrious drink at the Yeoman’s Arms, because they shared certain inclinations, and hoped to share certain enjoyments, but all their plans have burned to cinders.
‘He did a bunk. Ran off with a wad of cash I was keeping.’ Grant stared into his beer glumly. He had promised to introduce Jack to his nice young mechanic, but the young mechanic had vanished. ‘I don’t suppose there’d be any point in reporting him.’ It was as much statement as question.
Carnes shook his head. He also had problems. He had heard a whisper that Emma had begun flinging herself around, and the Hendrys had applied to the Council for permission to put a pig farm on the field at the back of Harry Chapman’s place. He valued his friendship with Chapman, for he had cleaned up a tidy bit from buying shares in a company called Wide Horizons, and enjoyed some very pleasant holidays in Provence. County Council chairmen also profited nothing from gossip. ‘They won’t do a thing.’
‘Don’t you play golf with Bill Langham?’ Detective Inspector Langham was a power in the Thames Valley Constabulary.
‘He’d probably say you paid the boy for services rendered.’
Grant sighed. He had suspected as much. ‘I’ll have to find somebody else.’
‘So will I.’ Carnes was gruff. ‘My wife has begun making a fool of me. Somebody told me she has taken a shine to Miller.’
‘The one with the old Volvo?’ Grant’s eyes gleamed suddenly. ‘Do you want me to fix it?’
Carnes looked alarmed. ‘No.’ He was silent for a moment, and then spoke thoughtfully. ‘I’m having lunch next week with a man called Derricks, who runs a children’s home for the County. He’s a sympathetic sort of chap, and he has some nice young teenagers under his wing.’
Grant was sometimes a very coarse man. He laughed. ‘Inside his pants?’
Carnes looked pained. But the two men understood each other perfectly.