“Out of work? What sort of work does he do?”
She sat down opposite him and crossed the best pair of legs Burden thought he had ever seen. He stared at a patch of floor some inches from her feet.
“He’s a television actor, or he is when he can get work. He so terribly wants to be a household word. The trouble is his face is wrong. Oh, I don’t mean he isn’t good-looking. He was born too late. He looks just like Valentino and that won’t do these days. John’s going to be just like him. He’s very like him now.”
Matthew Lawrence . . . it rang some sort of bell. “I think I may have seen his picture in the papers,” said Burden.
She nodded earnestly. “Escorting Leonie West about, I expect. She used to be photographed wherever she went.”
“I know her. She’s a ballet dancer. My daughter’s crazy about ballet. As a matter of fact, I think that’s where I’ve seen your ex-husband, in pictures with Leonie West.”
“Matthew and Leonie were lovers for years. Then he met me. I was a drama student and I had a small part in a television series he was in. When we got married he said he wouldn’t see Leonie any more, but he really only married me because he wanted a child. Leonie couldn’t have children, otherwise he’d have married her.”
She had been speaking in a very cool practical voice, but now she sighed and fell silent. Burden waited, no longer tired, even more interested than usual in other people’s life stories, although this one perturbed him strangely.
After a while she went on. “I tried to keep our marriage going and when John was born I thought we had a chance. Then I found out Matthew was still seeing Leonie. At last he asked me to divorce him and I did. The judge expedited the decree because there was a child on the way.”
“But you said Leonie West couldn’t . . .”
“Oh, not Leonie. He didn’t marry her. She was years older than he was. She must be well into her forties by now. He married a girl of nineteen he met at a party.”
“Good God,” said Burden.
“She had the baby, but it only lived two days. That’s why I’m keeping my fingers crossed for them now. This one just must be all right.”
Burden couldn’t keep his feelings to himself any longer. “Don’t you bear any malice?” he said. “I should have thought you’d hate him and his wife and that West woman.”
She shrugged. “Poor Leonie. She’s too pathetic now to hate, Besides, I always rather liked her. I don’t hate Matthew or his wife. They couldn’t help themselves. They did what they had to do. You couldn’t expect them all to spoil their lives for me.”
“I’m afraid I’m rather old-fashioned in these things,” said Burden. “I believe in self-discipline. They spoiled your life, didn’t they?”
“Oh, no! I’ve got John and he makes me very very happy.”
“Mrs. Lawrence . . .”
“Gemma!”
“Gemma,” he said awkwardly. “I must warn you not to bank too much on Monday. I don’t think you should bank on it at all. My chief - Chief Inspector Wexford - has absolutely no faith in the veracity of this letter. He’s sure it’s a hoax.”
She paled a little and clasped her hands. “No one would write a letter like that,” she said innocently, “if it wasn’t true. Nobody could be so cruel.”
“But people are cruel. Surely you must know that?”
“I won’t believe it. I know John is going to be there on Monday. Please - please don’t spoil it for me. Fm holding on to it, it’s made me so happy.”
He shook his head helplessly. Her eyes were beseeching, imploring him to give her one word of encouragement. And then, to his horror, she fell on her knees in front of him, seizing both his hands in hers.
"Please, Mike, tell me you think it’ll be all right. Just say there’s a chance, There could be, couldn’t there? Please, Mike!”
Her nails dug into his wrists. “There’s always a chance . . .”
“More than that, more than that! Smile at me, show me there’s a chance.” He smiled, almost desperately. She sprang up. “Stay there. I’m going to make coffee.”
The evening was dying away. Soon it would be quite dark. He knew that he should go away now, follow her outside and say briskly, “Well, if you’re all right, I must be on my way.” Staying here was wrong, entirely overstepping the bounds of his duty. If she needed company it ought to be Mrs. Crantock or one of those strange friends of hers.
He couldn’t go. It was impossible. What a hypocrite he was with his talk of self-discipline. Jean? he said, savouring her name experimentally. If Jean had been at home there would have been no staying, no need for control.
She came back with the coffee and they drank it in the dusk. Soon he could hardly see her and yet some how he felt her presence more forcefully. In one way he wanted her to turn on the light, but at the same time he prayed that she wouldn’t and thus destroy the atmosphere, warm, dark and scented with her scent, a tension and yet a peace.
She poured him more coffee and their hands touched. “Tell me about your wife,” she said.
He had never told anyone. He wasn’t the kind of man to open his heart and relieve his soul. Grace had tried to draw him out. That idiot Camb had tried and, in a more subtle and tactful way, Wexford himself. And yet he would have liked to tell someone, if only the right listener could be found. This beautiful kind woman wasn’t the right listener. What would she with her strange past, her peculiar permissiveness, understand of his notions of monogamy, his one-woman life? How could he talk to her of his simple gentle Jean, her quiet existence and her abominable death?
“It’s all over now,” he said shortly. “Best forgotten.” Too late he realised the impression his words had made.
“Even if you haven’t been too happy,” she said, “you don’t just miss the person, you miss love.”
He saw the truth of it. Even for him it was true. But love wasn’t quite the word. There was no love in those dreams of his and Jean never entered them. As if to deny his own thoughts, he said harshly, “They say you can find a substitute, but you can’t. I can’t”
“Not a substitute. That’s the wrong word. But someone else for another way of love perhaps.”
“I don’t know. I have to go now. Don’t put on the light.” Light would show her too much, his face after suppressed pain had worked on it, and worse than that, the hunger for her he could no longer hide. “Don’t put on the light!”
“I wasn’t going to,” she said softly. “Come here.” It was a little light kiss on the cheek she gave him, such as a woman may give a man she has known for years, the husband of a friend perhaps, and, returning it, touching her cheek, he still meant to kiss her in the same way with a comradely reassurance. But he felt his heart beating and hers beside it as if he had two hearts of his own. Their mouths met and his long control broke.
He kissed her with everything he had, crushing her in his arms and forcing her back against the wall, his tongue thrusting down into her mouth.
When he let her go and moved away shivering, she stood still with her head bowed, saying nothing. He opened the front door and ran from her, not looking back.
Chapter 7
Sunday, the morning of his lie-in. He had passed a horrible night, filled with dreams so disgusting that if he had read them in some work on psychology - the kind that Grace was always on about - he would have had no difficulty in believing they were the product of a diseased and perverted mind. Even thinking of them made him shudder with shame.