‘This transformation was not only for reasons of concealment. He seemed to hold a rather touching belief that by determinedly altering external details and behaviour he would somehow be psychologically transformed.’
‘Every day in every way ...’ quoted Barnaby.
‘Exactly. Up to a point, and on a fairly shallow level, this may be possible, but the wounds Gerald had received were far too deep, and deeply infected, to be even adequately cleaned by such simplistic methods. But, as everyone you must have spoken to must have confirmed, as far as the outward shell was concerned he did a brilliant job. By the time I met him he looked and sounded like your quintessential Englishman. Any gentleman’s club would have been proud to sign him on.’
Don’t know about that, muttered Troy silently. Catch him on an off night in his frilly nix and saucy veil and you’d have all the old gaffers in intensive care. Mine’s a triple by-pass, doctor, and easy on the rhino horn.
‘Obviously, the telling of this story was spread over some weeks. Gerald made it longer than was strictly necessary embroidering, offering up extraneous scenes like tempting titbits. Dropping Irish names that neither I nor, I imagine, anyone else much had ever heard of. It was plain he saw himself as a Scheherazade. As long as his unhappy tale held my attention we would continue to meet. When it ended ...’ Jennings made a sudden awkward gesture of brutal farewell.
‘So he made no further physical approach?’
‘Of course not.’
‘But if he had fallen in love with you—’
‘He loved me, which is rather different. Said he had never cared for anyone is such a way before and, at the risk of sounding vain, I believed him.’
‘Did he discuss sex at all?’
‘Once, in passing. He described it as a degrading itch to be scratched in degraded places with degrading people.’
‘Sounds as if he might have been in the habit of cottaging,’ said Segeant Troy.
‘Not with you.’
Too bloody right not with me mate. ‘Picking up men in bars, parks, public lavatories.’
‘Perhaps. I think when it was a matter of really letting his hair down he went abroad. Certainly this aspect of his life was something he attempted to conceal.’
‘Can’t see why,’ argued Troy. ‘Not as if it’s still illegal.’
‘Because it was a matter of shame and misery to him,’ cried Jennings angrily. ‘I’ve just told you his life story. Christ - can’t you work that out for yourself!’
Troy flushed angrily at this not entirely unfamiliar representation of himself as token insensitive clod. When he spoke again sheer perversity coarsened his voice.
‘So what happened to break up love’s young dream then, Mr Jennings? Turn you into the sort of person he was frightened to be left alone with?’
Jennings did not immediately answer. He seemed to flinch from a reply and Barnaby saw his mouth twitch and then tighten as if to trap any rogue words that might slip out. His eyes were watchful and his neck and shoulders unnaturally still.
Afterwards the chief inspector wondered at the provenance of the remark that he himself next made. He tried to trace its source. Had someone in the group talked to him about Jennings’ books? Had Joyce? Perhaps they had been filmed and he, dozing before late-night television, had unconsciously absorbed some image or vision of a bleak landscape which was now prompting uneasy feelings of déjà vu. Whatever the reason, a conviction was growing in him that could not be put aside. He decided to test it out.
‘Was Hadleigh aware, Mr Jennings, that you were writing everything he told you down?’
‘No.’ He looked up with tired resignation, as if they had reached this point, this mean, inglorious point in their discussion, only after long and weary argument. He said:
‘Do me justice, Barnaby. I never pretended his story was my own.’
They took a second break there. More refreshments were ordered and this time the chief inspector succumbed. He was ravenous. He had been in the interview room for three hours, listening hard, and all on a pathetic helping of assorted greenery that wouldn’t keep a rabbit up to snuff. In any case (some long-forgotten snippet vaguely connected with bedtime stories came to mind) wasn’t lettuce supposed to be soporific? Couldn’t have his concentration slipping.
And the sandwiches were so good. Thick shavings of rare roast beef, ham off the bone with orangebreadcrumbed rind and French mustard, Red Leicester and sweet pickle, all between satisfactorily thick slices of white or granary bread spread with pale butter.
‘Are these from the canteen, sergeant?’ said Barnaby, carefully pulling out a sprig of watercress and laying it to one side.
‘’Course they are,’ said Troy, with some puzzlement.
‘Incredible.’
‘Really?’ He watched the old man sinking his gnashers into sarnie number three. Troy himself had managed to snaffle only half a round before the remaining fatly bulging triangles had vanished. It had struck him as a perfectly ordinary sandwich. Jennings once more had eaten little.
‘Must be somebody new on the job. Right.’ Barnaby pushed his plate aside and turned once more to matters of moment. ‘Do you feel refreshed, Mr Jennings?’
‘No.’
‘Excellent.’
As Troy stacked the tray and put it on top of the filing cabinet he remembered that the point at which the conversation had broken off had left him floundering. He didn’t like that at all. Being lost. Ahead of the game was where he liked to be. Or alternatively (rock-bottom basic minimum) running level with the other players. It seemed to him the goal posts had suddenly been moved, which was just not on. He sat down, tightening the level of his attention, hoping at least to spot the ball. Or rather, if he remembered correctly, the book.
‘If you remember,’ Jennings was saying, ‘I mentioned at the beginning that I was working on a novel when I first met Gerald. Wanting to make lots of money, I was tackling formula fiction; stock situations, cardboard characters. No matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t inject a flicker of life into it. Gerald’s history, on the other hand, fired me. He didn’t tell it well, yet I was completely involved from day one. I filled in all the emotional gaps, created the sour, black bogs and Dublin promenades. Wrote dialogue for Liam, and Conor too, knowing it was absolutely right, even through I’d never met the man. As soon as Gerald left I’d get it all down, cramming one notebook after another, whereas before I’d hardly been able to fill a page. By the time it came to an end I’d got two hundred thousand words.’
‘At what point did you tell him what you were doing?’
‘At no point. Don’t you see ... ?’ Jennings, noticing Barnaby’s expression of ironic distaste, became extremely defensive. ‘He would have simply clammed up. This was the first time Gerald had told the truth about himself. I don’t need to tell you how important, how therapeutic, that step can be.’
‘I’d have thought,’ rejoined the chief inspector dryly, ‘that rather depended on the integrity of whoever they were talking to. And what that person did with the information received. A betrayal of the magnitude you were contemplating—’
‘You have no right to say that! I had no such plan. Not then. In fact I tried to persuade him into proper analysis. I knew a couple of excellent people and he could have certainly afforded it.’
‘How did he react to this suggestion?’
‘He got terribly upset. Said it was absolutely impossible for him to ever tell anyone else. He only told me because he sensed I was on the point of abandoning him.