Dangerous Thoughts (10 page)

I am lying alongside a murderer who has not yet committed a murder.

The thought came to me out of the darkness, utterly unannounced. Indeed, I might even have been dreaming, though I felt as if I hadn’t been asleep at all throughout the long-drawn-out reaches of the night.

You know how it is with insomnia. Right there in the centre of your brain is a scrunched-up ball of barbed wire, about the size of a clenched fist, and on this your thoughts impale and entangle themselves, and cannot escape. They are not amenable to reason, nor to relaxation techniques. They didn’t ask to be there in your head, any more than you asked to have them; but there they are, and you have to make the best of each other.

Murderers who have not yet committed a murder. All murderers are like that to start with, of course, even Jack the Ripper, and so what is the change that comes over them, between one moment and the next, which turns them from commonplace citizens into murderers?

“He always seemed such a nice, ordinary fellow, just like anybody else,” the neighbours say afterwards. And of course that’s what he was, because he wasn’t a murderer before it happened, he
was
an ordinary fellow. So what was it that happened to change him, so quickly and so completely, in a minute or less? No other change in Nature is as quick as that …
The caterpillar into the chrysallis … The tadpole into the frog … it always takes quite a while — days, usually, or at least hours …

Tadpoles … Caterpillars … Coiled green things, black wriggling things, squirming and writhing behind my closed lids, interweaving, separating, winding in and out of one another in a slow, curving rhythm …

I thought I was falling asleep, but no such luck. My eyes had snapped open again, and there once more was the dim outline of the window behind the thin curtains, squared-off against the darkness of the room, and perceptibly brighter than it had been when I last looked. It couldn’t be morning yet; it must be the moon, gibbous in the eastern sky, with its back tilted towards the coming dawn. A thin, a wafer-thin slice of silvery light fell across Edwin’s bed from the crack between the curtains; and, propping myself on one elbow, I watched it moving, millimetre by millimetre, towards his face.

I hoped it wouldn’t wake him; indeed, I was almost sure it wouldn’t. After all the turmoil of the day, not to mention the harrowing conversation we had engaged in last night, he was sleeping as peacefully as a baby.

Is this how murderers normally sleep, the night before the deed? Or was Richard Barlow right? I recalled the scornful twist of the lip with which he had affirmed that my husband would never dare to commit a murder. ‘He’d get cold feet. He’d chicken-out!’

Would he? I recalled the definition of a neurotic which I had read somewhere: ‘A neurotic is a criminal without the courage to commit a crime.’

Was
Edwin a neurotic? His bad moods … his anxieties … his endless fusses about everything … did it add up to neurosis? And anyway, was there any truth in the definition? How would you set about testing it?

I wondered, vaguely, why that streak of moonlight was taking so long to reach Edwin’s face: then realised I’d had my eyes
shut for some time now, and so that must be why I hadn’t seen it happen.

Never mind. Soon it would be morning. Maybe everything would seem different in the morning?

The first thing that was different was that I overslept. It was past nine when I opened my eyes on the busy little alarm clock which had failed to wake me at a quarter-past seven, and when I got downstairs I found that Jason had done his own breakfast — some kind of a fry-up, from the look of it — and had got off to school. Edwin — wearing clean shirt, tie, and his most important-looking suit — was slumped over the breakfast table, surrounded by crumbs and marmalade, and scowling over a dauntingly bulky array of morning papers, both quality and tabloid.

He did not look up when I came in, and I stood for a moment assessing the clues before I risked upsetting him by saying ‘Hullo’, or ‘Good Morning’, or something similarly controversial.

The suit and the tie were the most unnerving of the clues. Normally, Edwin eats his breakfast in his tattered dressing gown and down-at-heel slippers. On the other hand, the crumbs and marmalade were a
good
sign: when he is in a
really
bad mood he has only a mug of black coffee, which he leaves untouched for long enough to be able to complain of it being cold. The significance of all those papers, though — that was more difficult: except for the fact that he must have gone out and bought them before breakfast, on his own two feet …

“The cunning swine!” he burst out, still without raising his head to look at me. “Hardly more than a couple of column inches
anywhere! What the devil’s he up to? If he’s trying to show me up, then all he had to do was to get
his
story splashed across the front pages! What’s he holding back for? Here — look!” He pushed across the table towards me one of the more responsible dailies, jabbing with his thumb at a smallish item on one of the inner pages.
Second
Journalist
Safe
Home,
was the non-sensational heading, in small bold, followed by a low-key and very short summary of the bare facts of Richard’s experiences, carefully making no reference to the presence or absence of Edwin at any stage of the expedition. I read it twice, and it was clear to me that so cleverly were the discrepancies played down that no ordinary reader would be likely to deduce from it that Edwin’s earlier and highly-publicised account was in direct conflict with this one. Richard must have deliberately foregone a lot of publicity due to himself in order to achieve this effect. A decent man, I surmised, behaving decently towards a colleague in the profession, and abiding punctiliously by the ‘don’t tell tales’ ethos of the public school education to which he had assuredly been subjected.

“Well,” I said warily, handing the piece back, “at least he’s kept his word. He told me he had no intention of showing you up, and you must admit he’s stuck to his promise so far. And at some cost to himself. I mean, he had a scoop on his hands if he’d have liked to use it …”

This whole speech was a mistake, especially the last bit. Never, ever, should you let yourself be trapped into enumerating the virtues of your husband’s rival; each one is a red rag to a bull.

I had been about to seat myself at the marmaladey table to help myself to a slice of something, but now I decided to remain on my feet, the better to withstand the storm.

“‘At some cost to himself’! ‘A scoop on his hands!’ Really, Clare, I don’t know how you can be so naïve! Can’t you see what he’s up to? He’s biding his time, he’s getting his act together to smash me! Tomorrow — the next day — next week, you’ll see the banner headlines in every paper accusing me of being a liar and a
fraud! He’ll get his scoop all right, don’t you worry, and after all the publicity I’ve had, it’ll be a big one!

“He’s busy setting it up right now — can’t you tell? He’s up to something, I know he is! Haven’t you noticed, Clare, that the media are beginning to drop me? That’s
his
doing, it’s obvious. Do you realise there wasn’t a single call from the TV people all yesterday? Not even from radio. I don’t know what strings he’s been pulling to get me dropped — the Old Boy Network I suppose — but the fact remains that from the moment he set foot in this country, everything has stopped for me. Do you know, they didn’t mention me on the News
at
all
this morning? I listened at seven, and again at eight. Not a dickey-bird! They’ve
dropped
me, Clare. He’s been getting at them, and they’ve dropped me like a hot brick! But, my God, he’s not getting away with it! He’ll find a hotter brick than he’s ever bargained for dropping in
his
direction before he’s much older!”

The pain, the outrage in Edwin’s voice were almost laughable. Did he really imagine that Richard was responsible for the fading of his, Edwin’s, newsworthiness? How long had he
thought
it was going to last, all this lionising and razzmatazz? He, of all people, should be aware of how swiftly even major world events drop out of the headlines and are seen on the news stands no more. The experience of Fame is almost a religious one, straight out of the Bible: ‘He cometh up like the grass and is cut down.’

But this was hardly the moment to point this out. I could feel my mind filling up, like a cistern, drip, drip, drip, with less than tactful remarks. Sooner or later, one of them was going to overflow; and sooner (not later) one of them did.

“Well, but remember, Edwin, we were both out for a lot of yesterday, there could easily have been the odd call …”

Here I stopped, for two reasons. First, that ‘the odd call’ might sound a disrespectful sort of phrase by which to refer to so momentous an occurrence as a request for Edwin’s participation in the
Bright
and
Early
Chat
Show,
or some such: second, I didn’t want to reactivate our long-standing dispute over the installing,
or not installing, of an answerphone. Pro (Edwin’s argument): the possibility that important work opportunities for him might be lost if not responded to promptly: Con (mine): the fact that Edwin never responded promptly to work opportunities anyway, even when he
was
in to take the call.

Not that this last consideration applied at the moment. Since his sudden elevation to world stardom, he had been hanging over the phone like a love-sick teenager; but this wouldn’t go on for ever; certainly not long enough to cover the time-span between the initial request for the instrument and the date when the final batch of technicians had tramped through our house for the last time, and the thing was actually installed.

And then, after all that, the part I dreaded most would begin: the duty (and assuredly it would fall on me) of apologising to all these callers for Edwin not having done a thing about them. If we
did
have an answerphone, I found myself thinking, then the recorded message should go something like this:

“If I don’t take any notice of your call it’ll be because I’m bored to death with you and can’t be bothered to answer. So please don’t waste your time ringing again.”

Strange how swiftly such a series of desultory thoughts can flash through one’s mind. I’ll swear that there was no perceptible break in the sentence ending with “the odd call” before I was headlong into making amends, “A call from the TV people, I mean — something like that. Or maybe from
International
Focus
?
Which reminds me, Edwin, there’s been another message for you from the editor. He’s been trying to get hold of you ever since you got back …”

“The hell he has! Tell him to stuff himself, Clare! I’ve got bigger fish than
him
to fry, as he should realise by now. When he saw that screed in the
Daily
Recorder,
he must have known that I …”

For a moment his face had lit up with the contemplation of past — well, two-day-old — glories; then it darkened.

“That’s another thing, Clare! I don’t like his tone! I couldn’t
understand it at first, but now I can see what’s happened. This precious Richard of yours has been getting at him. He’s gone behind my back to make trouble between me and my editor — don’t you think that’s a pretty rotten way for a fellow-journalist to behave? Don’t you think so, Clare? You talk about his public school ethos — and perhaps that
is
the public school ethos? To betray your colleagues? To make trouble for them behind their backs? — If so, give me the secondary moderns any day …”

“They don’t have secondary moderns any more,” I pointed out, abandoning all attempts to placate. “And what’s more, you’re being very unfair, Edwin. There’s absolutely no evidence that Richard has even heard of your editor, let alone telling tales to him about you. Why on earth should he? Why should he be doing
any
of these things? You seem to think he’s trying to rubbish you — but
why
?
What for? What does he stand to gain?”

“Listen, Clare, you’re so innocent it’s not true! I suppose it’s the sheltered life I make it possible for you to lead; you have no conception of the jungle of treachery and back-biting and stabs-in-the-back within which
I
have to make my way. What does he stand to gain, you ask me? I’ll tell you what he stands to gain. I’ll tell you exactly what his long-term plan is. He plans to blackmail me. This killing of my story is only a start; the threats are going to follow. He’ll threaten to show me up as a liar, and there’ll be nothing I can do about it because he’s at the top of this racket and holds all the strings. I’ll be in his pocket, he thinks, and he’ll be able to use me for any dirty business he likes, under threat of ‘telling on me’ if I refuse …”

Here he sprang to his feet, pushing back his chair with a loud crunching sound, pulverising toast crumbs and gouging yet further dents and scratches into the kitchen lino.

“What sort of a man do you think I am, Clare, to give in to that kind of a filthy threat? Knowing that it’s all lies? And it
is
all lies, this preposterous story of my not having been there … surely you realise that? I did think, Clare, that you at least would have faith in me …”

Faith. A slippery concept. Somewhere, I once read of a schoolboy’s definition of the word:

‘Faith is believing in something that you know isn’t true.’

I paused for just a second before answering. Then:

“Of course I do,” I said.

It was only after he had left the house, with the familiar flurry of lateness, mislaid briefcase and complaints of never having time for a proper breakfast, that I found myself wondering what, exactly, he was late for? Our breakfast time quarrel — disputation — whatever you like to call it — hadn’t been conducive to chatting about the day’s programme.

He was going somewhere of significance, that was for sure; not lightly did Edwin get properly dressed before breakfast. Though of course during the last few days all his lifetime habits had been turned upside down, and at the beckoning of the media he would have rushed anywhere, at any hour, and wearing anything, even a suit.

But his brief hour of glory was at an end. On his own admission, no one in the publicity world had asked him to do anything, or be anywhere, since the night before last. He was yesterday’s hero; today’s dead duck, buried deep under a mountain of fresh happenings. The world had moved on without him, and this morning he was of less importance than even the tiniest happening in even the remotest corner of the world, so long as it was happening
now.

So, it wasn’t renewed media attention which had got him up so early. Nor was it a new offer from any of the publishers and editors who had made vaguely encouraging noises to him during the last few days. If it had been something like that, he would certainly have told me. Because, despite our damaging
differences, and the gulfs of misunderstanding that lay between us, there was one area in which Edwin always kept touchingly close; and this was the area of his successes, insofar as there were any. A fan letter from a reader; a kind word from one of his editors; an appreciative mention of one of his articles, and he would be rushing to me like a child out of school with a good report. The kind words would be read out to me not once but half a dozen times; the appreciative mention would be xeroxed so that I might have a copy of my very own, to keep. And keep them I did, though
where
to keep them was a continuing problem. Some of them were currently in the dresser drawer among the tea towels; the one from Japan, as yet untranslated, still languished behind the tea-caddy, awaiting categorisation.

“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” my grandmother used to say; but then she was married to my grandfather, not to Edwin.

It was disarming, in a way, this habit of his; it showed that he at least valued my admiration and approval. And the fact that he also valued absolutely
anybody’s
admiration and approval didn’t entirely devalue this little link between us. I don’t know why, but it didn’t.

So, it wasn’t a lucrative offer of work from any source. What else might it be? What other errand might get a man out of the house at an unaccustomed time, dressed up to the nines, and carefully refraining from telling his wife where he was going?

An hour or so later, while I was still turning over the possibilities in my mind, the phone went: it was Sally.

“Oh, Clare!” she breathed excitedly, “your adorable husband is here — did you know he was coming?
We
didn’t, it was just a lovely surprise. He’s just popped in, he says, to see how we’re getting on, isn’t that darling of him? Mostly, I suppose, he wants to see Richard; they must have
such
a lot to talk about after all they’ve been through together, but unluckily Richard isn’t here just at the moment. It’s funny, he doesn’t seem to be at the office either. I rang them, and apparently he hasn’t been
in at all this morning … something must have cropped up, I suppose …”

She paused; but before I had a chance to frame any of the questions that were taking shape in my mind, she was continuing:

“Anyway, I’m sure he’ll be in to lunch … that’s what I’m ringing about really, Clare. You see, it seems a shame that Edwin should miss seeing Richard altogether, after coming all this way, so I’ve asked him to stay to lunch; and then it occurred to me how nice it would be if you came too. I mean, since he’s here anyway. And you could bring your car, Clare, couldn’t you, so he wouldn’t have that awful journey back on buses and things. It’s ghastly crossing London by public transport, isn’t it? Whenever I take Barnaby to the dentist I have to — our dentist’s in Harley Street, you see; absolutely
nowhere
to park …”

It’s always hard to break into Sally’s telephone monologues, but I managed it this time. Sheer surprise made it easy:

“You mean Edwin hasn’t come in the car? He’s come all that way without it — in the rush-hour?”

Most un-Edwin-like behaviour, this. On top of the suit, and the briefcase, and the whole carry-on at breakfast.

“Wait a moment,” I said, and going to the window I looked out. She was quite right: he hadn’t taken the car.

Mystery after mystery. Perhaps I
had
better accept this invitation, if only to see what on earth was going on?

First, though, I was going to finish tidying the kitchen, having once started it; and so, telling Sally I’d be there soon after twelve, I returned to my task.

It wasn’t as bad as it sometimes is. The biggest problem always is the assortment of unsolicited paper that litters every surface: free newspapers, free-gift advertisements and brochures, and all those miscellaneous brown envelopes which one can tell at a glance are not worth opening, and yet which make one feel uneasy at the thought of throwing them away.

Thank goodness the giant toadstool thing was gone, anyway. Jason must have remembered to take it to school with him to show to the knowledgeable Tim. With any half-way luck, the said Tim would take it to
his
home and keep it there, and then I wouldn’t need to keep protecting Edwin from being upset by it. Maybe Tim’s mother didn’t have anyone who had to be protected from this sort of thing?

Lucky lady!