Paid and Loving Eyes l-16 Page 8

  My head was bent too. “Jan?” I said to the plastic sheeting. My breath condensed on it. “It’s me. Lovejoy.”

  The figure didn’t move. You could see bits of his features, mottled and scaly like a fish gone bad. Couldn’t they cover his burnt bits up, for God’s sake? He seemed to be lying uncomfortably, and not on proper bedclothes either. Didn’t they give sick folk a proper mattress? Hell flaming fire.

  “Anything you want me to do, Jan?”

  “I haven’t got a brother.”

  Barely audible. I found myself looking about guiltily, but the night nurse wasn’t in earshot. “I lied. They wouldn’t have let me in otherwise.”

  An arm moved—well, some place the limb should have been shifted slowly. Tubes trailed with it.

  I said, a bit apologetically, “Stop frigging me about with this Jan the Critic gunge. You’re from Tooting Bec.”

  “How did you find out?” No laughter, but I felt he’d be amused if they lifted the hospital off him.

  “I phoned the newspaper. Said I was your doctor. They told me your address. I phoned the girl there. Lysette, isn’t it?”

  Astonishingly, I saw an eye open to hold me in its gaze. Not such a nerk after all, lying here with that alert bright orb steady on me.

  “Why’re you digging, Lovejoy?”

  This was the hard part. I hesitated. “I have to know what happened after they took you out of the barn that night down in the harbour.”

  Silence. No feeling of a would-be smile now. More like would-be fright.

  “Listen, Jan. I’ll guess. You just tell me if I go wrong.” I licked my lips, planning ahead. “The hoods threatened you. You got scared, decided to make a run for it. You commissioned Steve Yelbard as a decoy, didn’t show. You got your motorized caravan, and heading through Archway had an unexpected accident—”

  “Accident.” The limb moved.

  “Was it Corse’s men?”

  “Not even a crash.” He sounded so tired. “They made me watch while they burned it. They threw me in the door. I heard them laughing. I hit my head and couldn’t move. It was all afire. Some passing football supporters pulled me out, the nurse told me.”

  “I’m scareder than you, Jan. I’ll say nowt, and do less.” But I’d had to know. I mean, I’ve worked for Big John Sheehan quite a few times. “Was it Corse, or Sheehan’s lot?”

  “Neither. They set me running, Lovejoy, but they wouldn’t care where I went.”

  Odd. “Where were you going?”

  “Back to Geneva. I thought I’d be…”

  “That’s enough, Charles,” the night nurse said, quietly interposing. She looked ready to deal with a million tubes in a million horrid ways. I’d learned enough. I thought.

  “So long, Jan. Keep going, eh?”

  “Lovejoy.” I bent my head to hear the whisper in spite of the nurse’s tutting. “My address, my —”

  “Safe with me, Jan. Cheers.”

  On the way out, I almost bumped into a bonny dark-haired girl. She was hurrying towards the ward from the lift’s cacophony of clashing doors. She didn’t spare me a glance, just hurried on past. Lysette? I’d bet a quid.

  Sometimes, I wonder if everybody doesn’t go through life desperately trying to avoid being seen. It’s as if we’ve all committed a murder, and have a nagging terror we might get spotted. Oh, I know we go about pretending the opposite, wearing fashionable clothes, sprucing ourselves up to catch the eye. But that’s only surface ripples. Deep down, we strive for anonymity. At least, some do. Like me. I’m a chameleon in search of a colour against which to stand and vanish.

  Especially to Cissie.

  Lovejoy, her note said, as if I hadn’t enough to do. Come immediately. It’s urgent. I shall be in until eleven. No signature. I knew who.

  Yonks since, I mentioned a wife I once had. Cissie’d become a half-remembered dream. I couldn’t even recall her face, not that I’d tried. Like a pillock I drove obediently through Lavenham, wondering why the hell I was bothering. Marriage isn’t what folk say it is. Bonding’s pretty loose stuff, and marriage knots aren’t. In the first place, it’s hard to find any spouse who behaves as if morality’s there in strength. Second, married couples never agree on what marriage actually is. For me, I simply hadn’t understood that getting married to Cissie did not constitute a proper introduction. Mind you, who can fathom birds? Why, for instance, was the Marquis de Sade’s missus Renée unswervingly faithful to him all the years he was in the Bastille, only to leave him the minute he got sprung? You tell me.

  Their house is enormous. I’d only ever been there once before, to deliver her share of the belongings. She’d banished me, her belongings and all, threatened me with the police if I ever showed again. I’d been delighted to comply.

  “My usual Tuesday visit, Katta,” I said to the maid.

  She emitted a brief tubular screech, her signal of humour. A vast emporium of a maid, is Katta. She never stops spreading across your field of view. She’s been with Paul—more about him in a sec—since he went to school on the Continent. Probably rescued her from Castle Perilous, and kept her on ever since.

  “Oh, you!” she gave back, wittily. It’s all she’s ever said to me. It comes out. O keeyoo.

  “Announce Lovejoy, Katta, if you will.”

  She rolled ahead like a billowing cloud fast-forwarded in a nature film. You have to admire a bird who grapples anorexia to a frazzle.

  “This way, Lovejoy,” said Cissie, walking sternly between us, not glancing at me. I was deflected into a drawing room where Paul stood, trying his distinguished best to seem in command. It was doomed to fail within five furlongs of Cissie.

  She walked sternly to the fireplace and swivelled sternly. (If any spaces happen in the next few sentences, insert sternly; it’ll save endless effort on my part. Cissie is stern personified.) Blondish, exactly the right height-to-weight Quartel Index from working at her figure in pools and leotards, exactly the right height, clothes, teeth, attitude. She’s the most depressing example of perfection that ever crippled a bloke. Imagine a gorgeous death ray, you’re close.

  “Lovejoy,” she snapped, “you have to help Paulie.”

  “Why’d you not invite me to your wedding?”

  Note the absence of greetings, won’t-you-sit-down. What the hell was I doing here? I make me exasperated. I mean, I’d had two whole months of being wed to her Churchillian imperatives, enough to last several reincarnations, and here I was reflexly coming back for more. I’m beyond belief. I honestly get me wild.

  Paul is a posh lawyer, investor. City gent. He looks the part. I say that with all the derogatory effect I can muster. It’s all Paul ever does, look the part. I think he’s just a suit. Occasionally, like now, he can seem really lifelike when despair shows through, but he’s still only a Madame Tussaud replicate escaped from gene control.

  “In trouble, Paulie?” I kept pretty meek at this stage, because I can fly off the handle.

  “You must do as Philippe Troude says,” from Cissie.

  “In trouble, Paulie?” Me, still meek.

  “I said you must work for Philippe,” from between Cissie’s perfect teeth.

  “In trouble, Paulie?” Still meek, still on that old handle.

  She swung on him in fury. “I told you he’d be insufferable!” she honed out. There’s no other word for her speech. It’s a whine, a mosquito in your earhole at night that wakes you up flailing air, or a distant forester with a band-saw in the woods of an autumn. But the word doesn’t work for Cissie. She never, never ever, whines. She shrills, screams, shrieks, thunders, but never whines. Honing, that scrape you get from metal on a honing stone, is the best words can manage.

  “I. T. comma P.?” I said, so affable.

  “Listen to me,” she honed. I stepped back. The band-saw had moved closer, and forests give absolutely no protection from the likes of her. “Paulie has invested a great deal—a very great deal!—in Monsieur Troude’s enterprise. He’s not going to suffer on
account of a worm like you, Lovejoy!”

  Like at The Hague and the UN, her arguments always plead her own case in the guise of philanthropy. I listened with a sudden glim of interest. Why me?

  “Why me, Paulie?” Still a meek handle-hanger.

  “Tell him!”

  Half the trouble was, I’ve only to see a couple and my treacherous mind starts asking absurd questions. Like, how do they make love? Does he ever ravish her over the breadboard? Or in the garage unloading shopping? What do they say during grunts of passion? Have they ever wept in prayer? What charities do they support? Does he squeeze his blackheads? Hers? If so, what does he do with the end-product? Is he a mattress-wiper, or a surreptitious flirter of the rolled-up…?

  “Lovejoy! Pay attention!” honed in my ear. I honestly swiped at an imaginary mosquito. Paulie had been droning for ages. What with Paulie droning and her honing, they were a concerto of sound Schonberg would have envied with his mere twelve tones. Tone, hone, drone. I stood there, an imbecile amid exhortations.

  “… investment opportunities balanced against shortfall fiscal inputs retrograded leverage-wise…” he was saying. (I’m making this up; I haven’t a clue what actual words he was using. Like I said, an investment lawyer. You get the idea.)

  “… cullage from antiques reinvested across the board,” he said. And stopped.

  “And?” I prompted. He’d got to the only word I could understand, antiques.

  “And what?” he asked. He even managed to drone that.

  “What do you want me to do?” This is so typical, rich people greedy to be richer. If you want to become rich, don’t invest everything, and don’t spend virtually nothing. Simply buy a good, rareish antique. That’ll do the job. You want to know how? Right, a tip: Knocking around this old kingdom of ours are some thirty white-enamel-face long-case (so-called “grandfather”) clocks, with the most unusual dusty pinkish floral decoration on the dial. Birds, vines, leaves, the odd tendril, all painted so very slenderly. Simply go and buy one, average market price. What a rotten tip! you exclaim angrily, because the average long-caser is a whole month’s wages—expensive, no? Answer, no. Because that delicate manganese decoration signifies a value ten times that of the average grampa clock. See? Instead, prats like this Paul-Cissie molecule want to be moguls overnight. Hence the contumely.

  He looked pleadingly at Cissie. She glared. “Lovejoy knows all the time, Paulie. He’s just being aggravating.” She made me sound like a tooth abscess.

  “Words of one syllable, please.”

  “Help Philippe to identify certain genuine antiques overseas, Lovejoy. So he can reimport them here, for auction on the international market. Otherwise the profit vanishes.”

  She paused, to my relief. I felt like I”d got clogged ears from swimming underwater. You know how your hearing goes thick after being in the plunge for an hour?

  “The percentage return is —”

  “Paulie!” from honer to droner. He fell silent. Very, very wise of him. Disobedience was not tolerated in her ranks.

  “Why aren”t the antiques being auctioned off on the Continent?” I should have asked Troude that.

  “Lovejoy!”

  Exasperation’s not much of a response, is it, but it’s sometimes all you can get from marriage. Escapers know that.

  “Can’t be done for the price,” I said blithely, but still with a dollop of that good old meekness.

  “What kind of financial package are you —” droned Paulie.

  “Shut up!” from not-tell-you-again Cissie. “He means he doesn’t want to, Paulie.” She rounded on me. “You know Paulie’s invested our life savings in the scheme, Lovejoy.”

  Everything polarized. What some folk’d do without the first person singular, God alone knows. Cissie’s policy is, third person equals abuse; first equals the cause of righteousness. I thought, blimey. Then got intrigued, because I couldn”t remember ever having thought that Cockney expletive before. Blimey, from the old English curse, blind me if I lie. Why blimey now? I”m no Cockney. Some trigger had set me off.

  “Shake him, Paulie!” she was honing.

  “Do if you dare, Paulie,” I said evenly. “I didn”t come up the Stour on a bicycle.”

  He lowered his hands. I felt sorry for him. He should have got out while he was still alive.

  “You have to, Lovejoy,” he said. “Please.”

  How desperate it had all suddenly become. I was intrigued. I mean, for Cissie even to summon me to her presence was a step of grimsome magnitude. What an interesting scheme Troude’s was. Maybe the way to obtain more facts was to play hard to get?

  “No, ta.” A little unmeekness had crept in after all, which only goes to show you can’t depend on practically everything. “See you. May you live for ever.”

  It’s the Chinese backhanded compliment. I chatted all the way to the front door with Katta. She did her soaring yell of a laugh and said, “O keeyooo!” I liked her. She’s the only one talks right in that house.

  The Ruby for once sparked at the first crank, and was off the starting grid like a racer. It was glad to be out of it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  « ^ »

  The lamp hours were ended when the Ruby shuddered to a stop. Almira’s Jaguar had gone. Even so, I entered the cottage like a night-stealing Arab, in case. She’d vanished all right. Hadn’t left any grub, thoughtless cow. Sulking, I bet.

  I went to bed. The divan was cold, but I didn’t mind. No tubes, no plastic bubble. Over and out.

  This tube machine was coughing, regular as a metronome. I came to in a sweat, realized it was only Donk’s motorbike in —repeat, actually inside—my porch. Motorbikers live on the damned things. Makes you wonder how they go to the loo.

  “Lovejoy?” Donk yelled at me, peering round the door. “Get your skates on, you idle sod. It’s eleven o’clock. Sun burning your eyes out.”

  The old squaddies’ shout made me feel queasy, remembering what had nearly happened to Jan Fotheringay, chucked into his burning caravan by anonymous arsonists.

  “Urgent message, Lovejoy. Pay up. And you still owe me.”

  I lay and thought while Donk’s wretched machine spluttered and fumes enveloped the world. Diana, Troude, or even Big John Sheehan? Or a normal thing like an antique, Deo volente? What choice does a bloke like me have?

  “Right, Donk.” I roused and paid up.

  “Ta. Message is, get to Mentle Marina. Noon. Jodie Danglass’ll be there.” He backed his bike, stuffed the notes down his jacket front. “You’re a jammy sod with the birds, Lovejoy. I saw that MP’s missus leaving.”

  Diana? Probably still paranoid about Troude hiring me. I was halfway back to bed when I paused.

  “Hang on, Donk. When?”

  “Three hours since. I come up earlier.” He paused as an idea struck. “Ought to charge double, two journeys.”

  “Donk,” I yelled to stop him. “What d’you think of her motor?” Donk’s engine mad.

  “Give anything for a maroon Jag, Lovejoy. Who wouldn’t?”

  And silence.

  Five long minutes I stood there naked as a grape, staring unseeing at the garden where the robin flirted for its morning cheese and the bluetits mucked about and the hedgehog trundled.

  My mind kept going: Donk saw, Almira—she of the posh motor— leave my cottage. He’d called her, what, that MP’s missus. I’d thought her husband an investment banker. She’d explained his absences by fluctuating share prices and such. What had Tinker said, in his confusing report that day? Now, I reckoned Diana’s bloke was an MP. Hadn’t Diana said as much, Jervis somebody? Was he that pompous Jervis, love in Diana’s lap? It flickered in my memory. Donk is only a messenger, admitted. Motorbikes think only of haring down the bypass at ninety so they can go even faster coming back. But they see an awful lot of people in a day, and know more than most. Was Almira Jervis’s tart on the side? If so, why did she haunt my restful hours? Or was she Mrs Jervis?

  Having deducted only baf
flement, I drove to Mentle Marina in time to meet Jodie Danglass at noon. I was worn out.

  She came to meet me, handbag swinging and hair blowing in the onshore breeze. I warmed to her, though I still hadn’t quite worked out why suddenly she was so prominent on my horizon, so to speak. Children were watching a Punch and Judy. Those weird nasal voices and everybody getting hanged or beaten put the fear of God up me, so I refused to advance towards her and waited where I could see the donkeys trotting across the sands.

  “Have I got the wrong accessories, Lovejoy?”

  “You look exquisite. This where Baff bought it, Jode?”

  She looked about, didn’t point. “No. That caravan site on the north shore. They have a funfair, disco dancing, open-air pub, amusement centre for the yokels.”

  We could see it, three furlongs on. First time I’d been at Mentle for a couple of years, when I’d bought a fruitwood lowboy—as the American dealers always call these 1720-ish small tables. I love applewood furniture, and paid a fortune in IOUs for it to a seaside landlady. (Don’t be daunted by the rather lopsided appearance of the little drawers, incidentally. It’s bound to happen to gentle woods like apple after about 150 years. In fact it’s a good honest clue to authenticity, in a trade which badly needs such.)

  “The south shore being where we’re heading?”

  “Yes. Two distinct halves, Mentle these days. B.T.” We started walking. “Before Troude.”

  The sands gave out midway along the sea promenade. There a few geological pimples, which pass for cliffs in flat East Anglia, rose with obvious effort to form a headland. A walker’s path climbed its contours through flower arrangements and decorative bushes so you could stroll with your ladylove while avoiding the ice-cream sellers and balloon touts.

  “He own this Mentle Marina too?”

  “The lot. North-shore funfair, caravan site, pubs. He’s the big shilling, Lovejoy.”

  With Almira Galloway and Sandy among his backers. But backers for what? The thing that worried me most, though, was the knowledge that Baff wouldn’t have got his part-time job unless the boss said so. Not only that—around here you obeyed this Troude prude. For some, or any, reason. Even if it meant taking a duff job that ended in a planned blagging by yobbos. How had Baff, your average minnow, mortally offended a marina mogul to earn that doom?