He had married, she heard, soon after; married and divorced and married again. His new book of poetry much acclaimed, he had given a reading at the university but she had not gone. She had glanced through the book once, displayed on the table in Water-stone’s, smiling quietly at a poem she thought most probably about her. She missed the way he would read to her at night, his work and others-Heaney, Longley, Yeats-but Andrew being Andrew, mostly his own. She surprised herself by missing sometimes the way he would arrive unexpectedly home after a lecture that had gone spectacularly well or badly, and reach for her no matter what she was doing, taking her, hungry and fast, pinned up against the sink or stretched along the stairs.
Jim, the peripatetic music teacher who eventually took Andrew’s place, had been far too sensitive and thoughtful to suggest anything so aggressive and uncaring. And Charlie … well, Charlie, bless him, was still a little hesitant and cautious at the best of times. A little lacking in that kind of fervor or imagination. Poets and policemen. Hannah smiled: at least she felt safe.
He was there when she finally arrived home, worn out after battling with the Sunday evening traffic on the motorway. A casserole of chicken and cured French sausage was in the oven, the kettle was simmering, ready to make coffee or tea. “You’d be So Nice to Come Home to.” Billie Holiday was playing on the stereo in the front room.
“Why don’t you let me run you a bath?” Resnick said. “Relax you. Then we can eat.” Arms around her, he had no idea why she was crying.
“Charlie, why is it?”
“What?”
“You’re forever trying to get me clean.”
Less than fifteen minutes hater, he carried mugs of tea upstairs and sat on the edge of the bath, telling her about what was happening with the investigation, the fact that he was now fully involved.
“Poor Jane,” Hannah said, “putting up with that for as long as she did. That bastard. That sanctimonious, know-it-all bastard. If he … if he …”
“If he did,” Resnick said, “we’ll catch him for it.”
She rested her head sideways against his leg and he soaped her back, rinsing it with warm water and then, when she climbed out of the bath, helping to towel her dry. When he kissed her, she felt him starting to harden against her.
“Charlie,” she said, “the casserole …”
“Isn’t that the thing about casseroles? They just sit there and wait till you’re ready.”
Bubbles of water speckled the small of her back and the length of her thigh as she lay on the bed. “Is that all right?” he asked. “Is this?”
She curled beside him, her legs around his, feeling his heart beating through his ribs.
“Why are you so good to me, Charlie?” she asked.
Later still, they sat propped up by pillows, dipping bread into Portuguese blue bowls and soaking up the juice.
Thirty-four
Grabianski remembered the first time he had seen her, striding out between the traffic on Gregory Boulevard, her topcoat belted but unbuttoned, a tall, well-made woman of a certain age. Now, as he stood on the steps outside the National Gallery, scanning the crowds that moved without pattern across Trafalgar Square, he felt the anticipation of her like ice beneath his skin. All below where he was standing, students lounged and laughed and smoked across the steps, Italians, German, French. More of them sprawled on the grass that ran wide along the front of the gallery, sharing it with the homeless and their cardboard havens, cans of cider and ratty wet-nosed dogs tied up with string-as much a part of the tourist sights as the Horse Guards on parade.
Grabianski willed himself not to look at his watch again, and lost; in any case, there was the clock beyond the square telling him past doubt that she was close to an hour late. Of course, she wasn’t coming, some emergency she had to deal with, one of the unfortunates she’d befriended had taken an overdose, thrown themself from a bridge; maybe one of the others, Sister Bonaventura or Sister Marguerite, had been taken ill. Or it could be simply the train, the train was late, seriously delayed, derailed, rerouted due to engineering works-wasn’t that always happening on a Sunday, engineering works? — he believed it was.
No. She had decided against it, pure and simple: decided, on reflection, it was not a sound idea, not pure and simple at all. Meet at the National Gallery, Sunday, to see the Degas. Innocent enough. He would give it another five minutes and that was all. Go round on his own. Except that would be too depressing. No, a movie; he could go and see a film, dozens of them showing five minutes’ stroll from where he stood. That slow jolt of pleasure, immersion in the dark.
The five minutes up and there he still was, fingers drumming the worn parapet of stone. Below him, buses crept past, red and green, some open at the top, Americans and Japanese craning their cameras toward the this and the that, guides blurred through their microphones; a bunch of dreadlocked, punked-up kids scrambling over one of the stone lions, pulling at each other’s legs and feet; a small boy, no more than four or five, running between the pigeons, clapping his hands so that they rose on grimy wings and resettled on the far side of the square; the slow bass shaking down from the open windows of slick cars as young black men anointed the afternoon with soul. Almost before he had time to register her presence, there she was, Teresa, Sister Teresa, smiling as she stepped over the outstretched legs of youths from Perugia or Milan.
“I’m sorry I’m late, so sorry. One thing after another.”
And Grabianski grinning fit to bust as, just to help her over the last hurdle, he takes her arm. “It doesn’t matter. Really, it doesn’t matter at all.”
The exhibition was in the Sainsbury Wing and the clock alongside the ticket desk informed them their entry was timed for forty minutes hence. The slightly harassed young woman at the entrance to the brasserie found them a table toward the far corner, almost with a view of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
“Cream tea?” said Grabianski, looking up from the menu.
“Just tea, thank you.”
“You won’t mind if I do?”
Teresa smiled her permission. Unlike some of her calling, it rarely occurred to her to deny others those pleasures she herself abjured.
Order placed, Grabianski was content to sit back and look. Teresa was wearing gray, a color she favored, but today in softer shades which accentuated rather than diminished the slight plumpness of her lower arms, the green that loitered in her eyes.
She was telling him of diversions via Milton Keynes, the thirty or so minutes they had spent, shunted onto a side line north of Willesden Junction due to signal failure; Grabianski half-listening, more than happy just to sit there, watching, watching the tilt of her head, the slow curling and uncurling of her fingers, the movement of her mouth-she knew he was watching her mouth-the stir of other conversations sealing them in.
The tea was served in china pots, Grabianski’s scone a wholemeal disk studded with sultanas, harsh to cut and rich to taste, richer still once he had ladled it with jam and cream; the cream not of the clotted, Devon kind, but fluid enough to suggest it might easily slide off the blade of a knife, his half-moon of scone, his tongue.
“A good choice, then?” Teresa said, eyeing his plate.
“Oh, yes.”
She smiled a private smile and added water to the pot.
“How are the other sisters?” Grabianski asked, wiping his face.
“Well. Sister Marguerite sends her love.”