Of course he’d given chase, trying to see if the kids in the back were his children. There were two of them, a younger boy and an older girl, of that at any rate he’d been sure. But they hadn’t been looking in his direction, and they seemed too big to be his Eugenie and his Jordan. He thought with a pang that it was six months since he’d seen them and small children alter considerably in six months, growing taller, their faces changing. It couldn’t be, could it, that this Jims had a couple of kids and it was his two in the car? Gay men did sometimes have kids before they decided women weren’t for them. He had to be sure. Today he was going to find out.
Getting off the bus at Charing Cross, he went into a newsagent’s and looked through the sort of newspaper that tells its readers what’s happening in Parliament that day.
The newsagent watched him turning the pages, folding back the sheets. “Like they say, if you don’t want the goods don’t mess them about.”
Jeff had found what he wanted. It was Maundy Thursday and the Commons sat at eleven. He dropped the paper on the floor, said like some character from Victorian fiction, “Keep a civil tongue in your head, my man.”
The river sparkled in the sun. The spokes on the London Eye glittered silver against a cloudless blue sky. Jeff walked past the Houses of Parliament, crossed the road, and turned into Great College Street. From the bus window he’d noticed that The Talented Mr. Ripley was on at the Marble Arch Odeon. He might pop in later. Fiona wasn’t keen on the cinema. He pushed open the art nouveau oak-and-glass doors of Abbey Gardens Mansions and was a little disconcerted to see a porter sitting behind a desk in the flower-decked red-carpeted foyer. “Mr. Leigh,” he said, “to see Mr. Melcombe-Smith.”
Zillah wouldn’t know who it was, but she’d let in a strange man who came to call on Jims. He hoped. However, the porter didn’t attempt to phone through to her but indicated the lift with a surly nod. Up Jeff went and rang the bell of number seven. It was the old Zillah who came to the door, the unmade-up, hair-scraped-back, casual-clothes version, though the jeans were Calvin Klein and the top Donna Karan. She screamed when she saw him and clapped her hand over her mouth.
The children’s schools had broken up for Easter, and Eugenie and Jordan were out for a walk with Mrs. Peacock while their mother packed for the Maldives. That they weren’t there and neither was Jims gave her courage. “You’d better come in,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”
“No you didn’t, my dear. You thought I was telling you I was dead. It’s not the same thing. You’re a bigamist, you know.”
“So are you.”
Jeff sat down on a sofa. He lived in comfortable and elegant surroundings himself so he had no need to comment on hers. “You’re wrong there,” he said. “I’ve never actually been married to anyone but you. Admittedly, I’ve got engaged to three or four but marriage, no. You want to remember what they said to the old person of Lyme who married three wives at one time. When asked why a third, he replied “One’s absurd. And bigamy, sir, is a crime.”
“You’re despicable.”
“I wouldn’t call anyone names if I were you. How do you and Jimsy-wimsy get on about a bit of how’s-your-father? Or is it a marriage of convenience?” He looked about him as if hoping for the missing pair to emerge from out of the cupboard or under the table. “Where are my children?”
Zillah blushed. “I don’t think you’ve any right to ask. If they’d depended on you they’d be in care by now.”
He couldn’t deny it and didn’t try. Instead, “Where’s your loo?” he asked.
“Upstairs.” She couldn’t resist saying there were two. “One’s the door facing you and the other’s in my bathroom.”
“Jims, Jims, the rick-stick Stims, round tail, bobtail, well done, Jims.”
Jeff didn’t open the door at the top of the stairs but the one to the right of it. Two single beds, two sidelamps with colored butterflies on their shades, otherwise almost without furniture and very tidy. He nodded. Next to it was a room the same size but rather austere, not quite a monk’s cell but in that category. The door at the end of the passage opened on to what he suspected an estate agent would call the master bedroom. On the double divan were two open suitcases, the kind that unmistakably come from Louis Vuitton. The crocodile handbag beside them was also open. Jeff put his hand inside. Feeling in a side compartment, he came upon a Visa card, still in the name of Z. H. Leach. Then he went back into the living room and offered Zillah a Polo mint.
“No, thanks, as always.”
“I see you’re packing. Going somewhere nice?”
She told him, adding sulkily that it was their honeymoon. Jeff burst out laughing, roaring uncontrollably, tickled to death. He stopped as quickly as he’d begun. “You didn’t answer my question. Where are my children?”
“Out for a walk.” She invented, “With their nanny.”
“I see. A nanny. Jims-oh isn’t short of a penny or two, is he? And will you be taking them to the Maldives?”
Zillah would have liked to say yes, but Mrs. Peacock and the children might return at any time. She’d already had enough stick from Eugenie because she wasn’t taking them. “I told you,” she said, “it’s a honeymoon. My mother will be here to look after them.”
Jeff, who hadn’t sat down again but had been roving about the room, said, “I won’t stay to see them. It might be upsetting for them and me. But I don’t like the sound of what you’ve been saying, Zil. It strikes me neither you nor Jims really want my kids. You didn’t say a word about them to those newspapers, not a hint to that magazine that you’d got any kids-oh, yes, I read it, I made it my business to read it.” He paused. “Now, Fiona loves children.”
This casual remark had the effect he hoped for. “Who the hell’s Fiona?”
“My fiancée.” Jeff smiled wolfishly. “She’s a merchant banker. She’s got a very nice house in Hampstead.” He left out the West.
“I suppose the BMW belongs to her.”
“As you say. Her house would be an ideal home for children. Four bedrooms, garden, everything the heart could wish for. And I’m home all day to look after them while she earns the moolah to keep them in luxury.”
“What are you saying?”
“Frankly, my dear, I’m not sure yet. I haven’t thought it through. But I will and I very likely may come up with a plan. Like applying for sole custody, right?”
“You wouldn’t stand a chance!” Zillah shouted.
“No? Not if the court heard you’d committed bigamy?”
Zillah began to cry. There was a notepad on the table with tearoff pages in a silver case. He wrote down Fiona’s address and gave it to Zillah, pretty sure he could retrieve any letter that came to Jerry Leach. Then he left, whistling “Walk on By.” As he closed the front door behind him he could hear her loud sobs. Of course he’d no intention of taking the children away from her, but the threat was a useful weapon. And he wouldn’t mind getting his own back on Jims, who was certainly using Eugenie and Jordan as pawns in the game he was playing to prove himself an exponent of family values. Should he tell Fiona about it? Perhaps. A doctored version at any rate.
Still, where were his children? That story about the nanny might be an invention. If Zillah had dumped them, where had she dumped them? With her mother? He didn’t like it. Perhaps he’d call again next week when Nora Watling was there and find out the truth. If she was there-if that wasn’t a lie too.
Now for lunch at the Atrium. On Zillah’s credit card? A bit dangerous. She and Jims might be regular visitors. Jeff had an idea that a credit card had some sort of code on it that betrayed the sex of the customer using it. In an Italian restaurant in Victoria Street he put it to the test and had no problem. All was well. Imitating Zillah’s signature was no problem either; he’d often done it in the past. The Talented Mr. Ripley, the three-fifteen showing, had just begun when Jeff got to the cinema. The small, intimate theater was almost empty, just himself, two other men on their own, and a lone middle-aged woman. It always amused him to see how they’d placed themselves, as far apart as possible, one of the men near the front on the extreme right, another, who looked very old, on the left halfway down and the third in the back row. The woman sat next to the aisle but as far as possible from the old man. It seemed to Jeff that human beings didn’t like their own kind much. Sheep, for instance, would all have huddled together in the center. He took his seat behind the woman-just to be different.