There, that wasn’t so bad, I thought, walking up to the cottage through twilight trees. Crazily, I felt... not obligation or guilt, though there were cobweb-fine tendrils similar to them, but an ambivalent sense of reluctance to let Tom Oates know that I knew. Extraordinarily, embarrassment and self-consciousness outweighed human aversion to a taker of life.
Later that night I heard a car labour up the track, headlights swept across my sitting-room window, and for no good reason, I expected the caller to be Tom.
It was Selina. “I won’t come in,” she called when I opened the front door. She leaned out of the car window. “What happened to you? I rang here for weeks, then gave up on you.”
“Must be your turn, now you know how it feels.”
“Touché.” She hesitated, then blurted, “I’m getting married.”
“Nothing more to be said, then,” I replied woodenly.
“You don’t seem broken up.”
“Do you want me to be?”
“I think I do, isn’t that awful.” She smiled sheepishly. “You might at least look shattered.”
I reached in and touched her hand. “I’m not making much sense to myself these days, not tracking properly. We had lovely times, Sel’, and I’ll never forget them. Best wishes, goes without saying.”
“Thanks. Come to the wedding, promise.” The sheepish look returned. She didn’t want to add that having known the bridegroom since he was in short pants, and being a casual friend of hers, I would start tongues wagging if I stayed away.
“If I’m in-country, I’ll throw rice and toast the pair of you,” I replied, thankful for darkness to blur a smile produced by willpower.
That ought to have been the end of it, but these things never end.
When Selina walked up the aisle of St. Mary’s, I was better than four thousand miles away, appearing on a TV chat show in New York. The host got my name nearly right and mentioned the latest book twice. In Chicago the name came out right during radio interviews, but one muttonhead forgot to ask about the book and another left listeners with the firm impression that I was peddling a whodunit while I was hyping a historical novel. In New Orleans, final stop, a charming guy got all the facts straight, allowing me to quit while ahead.
Tom Oates has gone fully grey now, his face drawn and furrowed, but the weight is back on and he’s a healthier colour. Predictably, Ben left Monks Farm to him. Tom has gone in for organic farming. There’s a good market for naturally grown vegetables and Ben’s neglect left the fields fallow long enough for chemical fertilizers to leech out. Tom breaks even, which is all he need do, thanks to money inherited along with the estate.
Not long ago I stumbled on the last pointer to his guilt: the motive. I was lecturing at a weekend creative writing school — love hearing myself talk, even without a fee. Over dinner, one student explained that he ran a property development company (“You’ve heard of Sunday painters, I’m a Sunday scribbler, ha-ha-ha”). Oddly enough, his work, right down to its dense thickets of syntax, read eerily like a less genteel Henry James who knew far too much about bribery over zoning matters.
When I mentioned living at Drawbel, Don Maxwell went into a boisterous pantomime, holding his index fingers towards me in a cross, vampire-defying fashion. Steadying our bottle of excellent wine, I said mildly, “It’s a nice part of the world and they gave up burning witches and eating babies... oh, ages ago, hasn’t happened since nineteen fifty-five.”
Maxwell chuckled inordinately, he was pretty high by then. “Drawbel Valley is written on my heart like Calais on Queen Mary’s. Lost a fortune there. Could have made one, leastways, and didn’t. Pal o’ mine retired there, asked me down. You know how it is, ‘If you’re ever in the area,’ and I stuck his address in the Filofax. Lo and behold, not a month later I went to an auction in Bath; Ben’s place was an hour down the road by Jag’, so I took him up on the invite.
“Well, he had this farm he didn’t know what to do with and the minute I set eyes on it — golf course, I go. Golf course. Knock the house down or extend it, whichever keeps the planners happy, and there you are, clubhouse and pro shop. We shook hands on the deal, and no sooner have I set up legal meetings than the silly beggar snuffs it. Left the place to a man who carried on alarming when I said the king was dead, long live the king, let’s make a cartload of money. No sale, no dice, no golf course and trimmings.”
So that was the long-ago trigger. Ben had broken the news to Tom one fine Sunday morning, and died in the subsequent explosion.
Maxwell frowned concernedly. “You all right, mate? Look like you had a bad oyster.”
But even that, more’s the pity, was not the finish.
Not long after dinner with my rich friend I was strolling up Park Street towards Bristol University to collect some research material. And I started assessing, in a chauvinist pig’s window-shopping manner, a very short skirt and long legs.
Then she glanced back and it was Selina. Fortunately my face is naturally impassive. I hadn’t seen her close-to in several years. It was not that she had aged, but there were elements of hardness and dryness, an aura as much as a look. Makeup more emphatic than before, a discontented pucker to her mouth. “Billy! Are you following me?” Big smile, wet kiss.
Like a fool, effusive through guilt at being disappointed in her, I asked Selina to lunch. “Lovely! I’ll just tell my manageress...” Truly, it had slipped my mind that her boutique was in Park Street.
Once we had ordered, Selina burbled that she only looked in at the shop twice a week now and as for me, I was a recluse, what were the odds against the two of us, etcetera and so forth. Pleased to a borderline nerve-wracking extent.
I don’t like the sound of this, whined the base, self-serving swine at the back of my mind. Married women have always been off-limits to me, less from concern over adultery than simple prudence. Affairs of that brand generally end in tears before bedtime; afterwards, actually, and because of.
Cue for tepid, neutral small talk, how was the boutique faring, what were her holiday plans... er, this Turner exhibition due to open at Bristol art gallery next month, wouldn’t that be a treat.
The smoked salmon couldn’t be ignored any longer. As soon as I paused for the first mouthful, Selina jumped in with, “I made a terrible mistake, you know.” And it all poured out: husband a morose workaholic, jealous, possessive, yet unwilling to spend much time with her. “Any attention he spares is the wrong kind, checking on me. I have to keep an eye on the business, but every time I come here, there’s a scene. He’s probably ringing the shop right now; I told Mandy to say I’m out looking at fabrics.”
“No need for that,” I said firmly. “We’re just having lunch, probably won’t happen again for years.”
“You’ve always been a friend,” said Selina, deaf to that warning shot. “Let’s not lose touch again, Billy.” Which was rich, considering she had kept me uncertain and distanced in the past, dates refused, calls unanswered as often as returned, and our liaison ended without discussion.
The pattern was depressingly familiar: damned if I did, damned if I didn’t, a rat either way. I could snub Selina right now, reminding her that then was then, and she was married now. Or I could stand by her, leading to meetings on the sly. I’d make a pass, it’s the way I am, and the overwhelming probability was that Selina would respond, that being the way she was.
Tucking my feet under the chair to avoid knee contact, unplanned or otherwise, I thought about a friend of mine in the Metropolitan Police, a murder investigator.