(1990) Sweet Heart (23 page)

The old woman sipped her gin and tonic. ‘I gave my poor boy his breakfast yesterday morning, and I haven’t seen him —’ She stopped in mid-sentence as her eye caught the perspex photograph holder on the window-sill. There was a montage inside which Charley had made up from various holiday snaps: Tom in a suede coat and herself in a camel coat, looking very early seventies, in front of the Berlin Wall. Tom at an outdoor café in dark glasses, the two of them in the cockpit of a yacht in Poole harbour. A shot of herself having a go (her one and only go) at hang-gliding. Tom on a beach in scuba gear. The two of them amid a drunken gaggle of friends around a restaurant table.

Viola Letters blinked and leaned closer, then pointed a finger at the picture of Charley and Tom in front of the Berlin Wall. ‘That’s you?’

Charley nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve changed a bit since then.’

She gazed at Charley, then dug her pudgy fingers inside the neck of her jumper and pulled out an eyeglass, closed one eye and studied the photograph.

She looked back at Charley. A strange wariness appeared in her crab eyes. ‘It’s uncanny, dear. Most uncanny.’

Charley felt edgy.

Viola Letters dabbed her forehead. ‘I — if you don’t mind dear, I’m really not — don’t think I’m feeling very well.’ She put her half-full glass on the table and glanced at the ceiling, as if she had heard something.

‘Can I get you anything?’ Charley said. ‘Would you like me to call a doctor?’

‘No. No, I’ll be all right.’

‘I’ll walk you home.’

‘No — I’ll —’ She stood up. ‘I think it’s just — bit of a chill.’ She looked at the photograph again.

It had been taken by another tourist, an American. He’d had difficulty with the camera, kept pushing the wrong button and Tom had got exasperated. Strange the details one could remember over the years. That was taken before they married, when she was about nineteen. She could remember the American. He looked like Jack Lemmon with a beer belly.

‘What is it that’s uncanny?’ she asked.

The old woman put on her wet oilskins and pushed her stockinged feet into her Wellingtons. ‘The resemblance,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s really given me a bit of a shock. I’ll be better tomorrow.’

‘What do you mean, resemblance?’

Ben growled, his head tilted upwards, and the old woman’s eyes slid up to the ceiling again, then at Charley, and she managed a weak smile. ‘Nothing really, dear. Me being silly. The brain’s not so clear as it was. It’s just that you —’ She paused. ‘Perhaps another time, dear. Pop round and we’ll have a chat about it.’

‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ Charley said. ‘See how you’re feeling. I could get you something from the chemist.’

‘It’s only a stupid chill,’ Viola Letters said, knotting the sou’wester strap under her chin. ‘It’s this damned change in the weather. Boiling hot one day, then this!’

‘Is it someone who you know who I look like in the photograph? A resemblance to someone you know?’

They stopped by the front door and the old woman shook her head. ‘No, I — I’d prefer to talk about it — another time.’ She leaned forward, dropping her voice almost to a whisper. Her mouth became a small, tight circle. The eyes slid down out of sight, then peeped warily at her again. ‘The first time we met, when you
came with that message from my late husband. Did I tell you I’d had that same message before? On the day he died?’

‘Yes,’ Charley said. ‘You did.’

‘That photograph of you — there’s a most extraordinary resemblance to the girl who brought me the message. I thought for a moment it was her.’ She opened the door. ‘Another time, dear. We’ll talk about it another time.’

That photograph of you — there’s a most extraordinary resemblance to the girl who brought me the message. I thought for a moment it was her
.

Viola Letters’s voice sounded crystal clear. As if she were in the room. Sunlight streamed in. Her finger hurt and her head ached. She climbed out of bed and walked to the window.

The storm had died sometime around dawn. Birds were out in force, thrushes and sparrows and blackbirds and robins prospecting for worms. Water dripped from the trees. The weir and mill race seemed louder this morning.

That photograph of you —

It was half past seven. The workmen would be here soon. She put on her towelling dressing gown and moccasin slippers and went downstairs.

As she bent to pick up the newspapers she heard a rustling sound coming from the kitchen, a crackling like shorting electricity. There was a smell of burning plastic. She ran down the passageway.

‘Ben!’ she yelled in fury.

But it was too late. Ernest Gibbon’s two cassettes were lying on the floor, their casings split, the thin tapes unspooled, crumpled, twisted around the table, around the chair legs. Ben was having a great time, rolling in the stuff, burrowing, rustling, scrunching it up, tangling it further all the time.

‘Ben!’ her voice stormed out, deeper and louder still. ‘Wicked!’

The dog stopped and looked at her. He stood up, brown tape draped around his head like a wig, and shook himself. The tape fell free and he slunk out.

She stared at the mess. How the hell had Ben knocked the cassettes off the table? She knelt and began to scoop the tape up into bundles, wondering whether it was still usable. But it was twisted, creased, knotted. Hopeless. She stuffed it into a garbage bag and tied the neck, ready for it to go to the large bins at the end of the lane. Then she noticed the smell of burning plastic again, getting stronger. It was coming from the Aga.

The lid of the hot plate was up and the picture frame of their holiday snaps, or what was left of it, was lying on the flat top, soggy, melting. The photographs inside were frosted globules of washed-out colour.

As she snatched out her hand to rescue it the frame burst into flames and she jumped back as filthy black smoke rose, twisting savagely upwards. She grabbed a dish cloth and whacked it. Bits of molten plastic and burning photographs scattered around the kitchen. One tiny piece landed on her hand, clung to it, burning, and she shook it and rubbed it against her dressing gown. Patches of lino were melting. She ran the tap into the washing up bowl, lifted the bowl out and poured it over the burning plastic on the Aga, then dowsed the rest of the tiny fires.

She opened the windows, coughing, her throat full of the filthy cloying smoke. The remains of the frame hissed and sizzled on the oven. She scraped it off with a metal spatula, dropped it into the sink and ran the cold tap. More steam rose and the blackened perspex curled as if it had a life of its own. The charred photographs inside it curled too.

The new application form for her birth certificate had arrived in the post. She read through it as she ate her muesli, chewing with no appetite, leaving the newspapers untouched beside her on the kitchen table.

The stench of the burned plastic and wet charred paper hung thickly in the room, and the floor was damp from where she had washed it down. The new wound on her hand ached along with the others. She finished her cereal and was having another go at scraping the remains of the perspex off the top of the Aga when the phone rang. She answered it mechanically, almost absently.

‘Yes, hello?’

‘Charley?’

It was Tom.

She slammed the receiver straight back down and sat, quivering, as it rang again. Three rings, then the answering machine clicked and Tom spoke as the tape revolved.

‘Charley? Darling? I want to speak to you, please pick up the phone.’ There was a pause. ‘At least call me back. I’m in the office all day.’ Another pause ‘Darling? … Charley?’ Then the sound of the receiver being replaced.

‘Go to hell,’ she said.

She made the workmen their morning tea and walked with Ben up the lane to see whether Viola Letters was better. To see if the old woman would explain why a photograph had freaked her out so much.

Charley was pleased she had hung up on Tom, pleased she had been strong. She wondered how long she could stay strong.

The curtains of Rose Cottage were still drawn, which surprised her; it was after eleven. There was a mournful miaow and Nelson, the one-eyed cat, was rubbing itself against the front door.

‘You’re supposed to be missing,’ she told it.

There were two bottles of milk on the step and the
Daily Telegraph
stuck out of the letter box. Charley closed the front gate behind her, tied Ben to the fence and ordered him to sit. She rang the brass ship’s bell. There seemed something idiotic about it, she thought, as the clang rang out. Nothing happened. She rang it several more times, then rapped on the door as well.

She looked at the cosy yellow Neighbourhood Watch sticker in the frosted glass pane beside the door, then pushed open the letter box and peered through. She could see the carpet, the stairs and a picture on the wall. Everything looked very still.

She walked around the side of the house. There was a fine view from the rear beyond the fence at the end of the neatly tended lawn, over the valley and woods. The cat followed her, miaowing insistently.

A fan vent in the kitchen window was spinning. She could see a tray, laid with a crystal glass and an unopened bottle of wine, a napkin in a silver ring,
Country Life
magazine, a peach and a knife on a small plate. She rapped on the glass pane of the back door, gently at first, then louder. ‘Hello? Mrs Letters!’ She called, then hesitated. Maybe she was asleep and did not want to be disturbed?

She walked to the front again and stared at the grey stone wall and the crenellations along the roof. Wrong. Something was wrong. A high-pitched whine cut through the still of the morning. Hugh working on one of his cars, probably. She untied Ben and went up the lane.

Hugh’s Jaguar was parked in his yard and the doors of his corrugated iron workshop were open. He was bent over the engine of the Triumph, which was sitting, minus its wheels, on metal jacks. A bright light hung down from the ceiling above him, its bulb inside a wire
mesh cage. The place smelled of oil and old leather, and there were acrid fumes of burnt electricity.

She gritted her teeth against the banshee din.

There were two other cars crammed into the small area, both under dust sheets. Tools and bits of motor cars lay on the floor, the work top, the shelves. There were boxes, tins full of nuts and bolts, loose spark plugs. More tools hung from racks. Old wheels, tyres, were propped around. The bonnet of a car was suspended on wires from the roof girders and there were several metal advertising signs fixed to the walls, Woodbine cigarettes, Esso Extra and battered licence plates, mostly American.

The noise died. There was a clank and something metal rolled along the grimy concrete floor. Hugh lifted his head out of the engine compartment and saw her. ‘Hi!’ He gave her a welcoming grin and laid the tool on the ground. The two halves of the hinged black bonnet sat up in the air like claws behind him.

‘How’s it going?’

‘I got the head off.’ He wiped his forehead with the back of his oily fist and nodded at the engine compartment.

She peered in; car engines always baffled her. She saw a tangle of wires, rubber tubing, several thin metal rods sticking up beside elliptical holes in what looked like the main part of the engine.

‘Considering she hasn’t been run for years, she’s not too bad. I need a couple of gaskets, and I might get her started up. Take you for a spin.’

She smiled thinly, feeling the odd recognition stirring again.

Chewing gum.

‘How much do you know about its history?’ she asked.

‘I’m going to try and trace the provenance. I don’t
think Miss Delvine was the original owner.’

No, she wasn’t
, Charley wanted to say.
His name was Dick
.

Her fingers felt as if they were touching ice.

Touching an old knife.

‘I’ve written off to the licensing people in Swansea.’ His eyes stared at her, penetrating, a deep curiosity in them, and she looked away uneasily.

‘Have you seen Viola Letters today?’ she said.

‘No. She came round yesterday evening searching for her cat.’

‘She came to me as well. She wasn’t well. I’ve just been to see her. The cat’s on her doorstep, and it doesn’t seem like she’s got out of bed. I hope she’s OK.’

‘Maybe she’s asleep. Taken some pill. All that booze she knocks back, I should think a couple of aspirins and she goes critical.’

Charley smiled.

‘Let’s try phoning her.’

They went into his house, Ben was invited too. In contrast to the neat exterior it was a ramshackle chaos, mostly of books and manuscripts, among them, she noticed to her surprise, a row of James Herbert novels. The walls were hung with old framed maps; there wasn’t much furniture, and what there was looked masculine and slightly dilapidated. Comfortable, in a lived-in sort of way, none of it would have looked out of place in a student room at a university.

He picked up the phone from under a pile of papers on his massive desk, rummaged through a book for Viola Letters’s number and dialled. He let it ring a dozen times, then redialled.

There was still no answer.

‘I’ll pop by later on and see if she needs anything,’ he said. ‘Actually, while you’re here, I was wondering if you and your old man would like to come and have
supper on Saturday, if you’re not doing anything.’

She blanched. ‘I — we’d — he’s away — business. I don’t know when he’s coming back.’

‘So you’re on your own?’

She nodded.

He was quiet for a moment. ‘I’m going to the pub this evening. Why not come? There’ll be a few people there.’

‘I —’ Cheery faces. No, no thanks, couldn’t face it, could not face lying about Tom. Could not face —

Being alone in the house. Waiting for Tom to call. Tom could go to hell.

‘Thanks. That would be nice.’

A police car was parked on the grass bank by the upturned skiff, and two policemen were standing on the footbridge with a local farmer she vaguely recognised, peering down into the sluice pond. She walked through the gate pillars, wondering what they were looking at.