The place had been advertised as containing a “flat with sea views,” but the sea view was there only if you craned your neck and got smack up against the window, turned your head sideways, and looked through trees; that way you could see a small slice of the sea.
Charlie had much of Chris’s manner, even if he didn’t have much of her character. Lean on her and she would never let you down. Try leaning on Charlie and you’d hit the ground. He wasn’t very dependable; he was a raging alcoholic and because of this Chris “cut him some slack.” (“Poor Charlie. He can’t help it; we’ve got to cut him some slack, love.”) Yet most people would feel exactly the opposite, heaping on Charlie’s head recriminations and reckonings.
They just didn’t understand addiction, Chris would say. Neither did Johnny, really. He wondered how it would feel to be an addict, hung up on booze or crack or heroin. The closest Johnny had ever got to heroin was Lou Reed’s song.
Charlie had shown Johnny a few new tricks-lord, but he was fast with his hands. After he’d put the cards up, he reached under the counter and pulled out a gun. Johnny staggered back.
“Oh, hell, John-o, it’s not real. Just part of an act a friend of mine’s putting together. Looks authentic, doesn’t it?” He slapped it down on the counter and said, “You know what Chekhov said, ‘If you put a gun on a table in Act One, it better go off in Act Three.’ ”
Johnny picked it up. “I’m glad this one won’t.”
“Lousy play, then. Come on.”
They’d closed the shop and gone along to the Lamb, where they were now sitting, Johnny drinking ginger ale, Charlie a club soda. Johnny wondered how difficult it was for Charlie to be so close to booze and yet not drink it. Charlie never drank around Johnny, anyway. It shows his regard for you, Chris had always said. Charlie did not know any more about Chris now than he had earlier. But he could understand Johnny’s need to talk to him; he and Chris were the only family left. He asked Johnny if he’d notified the police.
“Yes. But it’ll be twenty-four hours before they’ll do anything.”
“That’s to eliminate all the unhappy husbands or wives who’ve left out of choice.” Charlie was helping sort through the various options and the only alternatives. “Okay, she either left under her own steam or was taken.”
“It could be a combination, couldn’t it? I mean, she could have thought she was leaving on her own when really she was tricked into leaving. Like maybe somebody called up and said I was in hospital, something like that. And on her way she’s abducted.”
“Uh-huh.”
Johnny sighed. “That’s pretty melodramatic, I guess.”
“Melodrama happens. She didn’t leave you a note, you said, but remember Tess.” Charlie read a lot of books and spoke of the characters in them if he and they were on intimate terms. When the name didn’t register with Johnny, he said, “Hardy’s Tess, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The whole tragedy could have been averted if the note to her boyfriend that she’d shoved under the door hadn’t gone under the rug. He never saw it. Are you sure she didn’t leave you a message? Did you check under the rug?”
“No.” Johnny smiled. “There aren’t any rugs near the doors.”
“I meant that metaphorically. Could she have left a message anywhere you might not have come across it? Could she have told someone to make sure they told you? That sort of thing.”
Johnny nodded. “But if she had, they’d have told me.”
“Okay, let’s take it from another angle. Forget about the note.” When Johnny opened his mouth to object-Chris would never have done such a thing, left without letting him know-Charlie held up his hand. “I’m just thinking out loud, running down possibilities. Say someone out of the past comes to the door, convinces her that she has to go with him immediately. Now, I can’t think of anything in her past that might warrant such an extreme action, but you-”
Johnny shook his head.
“Don’t be so quick to dismiss it. Chrissie’s had a tough life, tougher than she probably ever told you about.” Charlie had shifted his position; he sat sideways facing the bar, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle.
Johnny watched him. “If you want a drink, Charlie, go ahead; don’t mind me.”
Charlie smiled. “Thanks, but I’m testing my will.”
“Chris says it’s nothing to do with willpower. That’s a mistake most people make about-” He shrugged.
Charlie was looking at the bar, shaking his head in a wondering way. “That’s Chrissie.”
And in a way it did sum her up; that really was Chrissie, who never rushed to judgment, never condemned out of hand, had an open mind and a great sense of fair play.
But she wasn’t soft, hadn’t that sticky sweet manner that one might expect to find in such a person. Chris could be sardonic and ironic, so that some people thought her too edgy. What a mistaken impression! What she had in abundance was patience. Like the way she treated Charlie. No, you could tell Chris anything and not be misunderstood or judged or told not to feel that way.
“What do you mean Chris had a tough life? Tough, how?”
“She had to put up with a lot. After her mother died, it pretty much fell to Chris to take charge, she being the oldest. I guess, though, there’s some good that comes of that kind of responsibility. Once you undertake it, you don’t forget it.” Charlie stared glumly into his glass.
There was a silence as Johnny thought Charlie must have been mourning the loss of a pint. After all, he depended on it, as alcoholics say, “like a friend, a best friend.” It was perfectly possible Charlie missed beer and whisky as much as Johnny missed Chris. He said, “She hadn’t been gone long; I mean, she’d only just taken things out of the oven.”
Johnny’s tone was so dejected that Charlie reached across the table and put a hand on the boy’s arm. “This sounds like hollow comfort, but I bet when we know what happened, after she comes back, we’ll be amazed we didn’t see it.”
“It’s like she just-vanished. As if there’d been some sleight of hand, a huge trick played,” Johnny said.
Charlie smiled. “Sleight of hand’s our stock-in-trade. Given what’s going on, you’d better have this.” He pulled the fake gun from his pocket and put it down on the table.
“I thought you said a friend needed it for his act.”
“I’ve got another.” Charlie flashed a smile. “Forget Chekhov.”
12
He had crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s on the lease. He had handed over a wad of money (in the form of a draft on his bank) and received the keys in return.
Melrose was again at the house he was free to inhabit for the next three months, happily without the estate agent following him about or Agatha erupting on his horizon. Tomorrow he would take back the hired car, jump aboard the train to London, from there to Northants, collect his Bentley and some clothes, and return and live here for three months, or longer, or less.
How fortunate he was to be rich. He only partly agreed with that glib saying that money can’t buy happiness. It certainly made misery a lot more bearable. Money was at the moment freedom to live here, or to live there, or to take a lease for three months and leave after only one.
But that did not answer the question, Why was he using his freedom in this way? He had wandered into the large living room and was standing now before one of the long windows looking out over the weedy garden. He wondered if he was coming up against a midlife crisis and this move was the first sign of it. No, he decided, midlife crises were not an option with him; he was too sanguine. He was simply overpowered by the melodramatic quality of this house and its situation. He certainly was given to regard himself in more melodramatic terms. It was quite fun, really, to picture himself standing on a shelf of rock, looking out over the swell of the waves folding over the rocks: Ever stood she, prospect impressed. He couldn’t get those lines out of his head.