After the Cabaret (25 page)

‘Briggs just shook his head. “Whatever it is there'll be an ace up his sleeve as usual.”

‘“And he'll have his eye on the pot.”

‘“Sally's got no money,” said Julia. “She's just borrowed ten bob from me.” But Pym was right,' said Bruno. ‘Money was involved. Although we didn't know it, that was why Theo married Sally.'

Bruno held out his glass for more brandy and Greg leaped to his feet. ‘
What?
'

‘Yes,' said Bruno. ‘Theo's confidence must have gone in Washington. The Menckens threw him over and something shocking must have happened to set Eleanor Roosevelt against him. Well, I suppose in his way Theo loved Sally – and she certainly loved him. And then,' said Bruno, ‘there was the money.'

‘Well, Bruno,' Greg said steadily, ‘it might have helped if you'd said earlier that Sally had married, that her name became Fitzpatrick. But when I checked him out he was married to someone else.'

‘That was later.'

‘At least she got her baby's father on board, just for a time.'

‘Oh, no,' said Bruno. ‘She didn't.' He finished his brandy and said, ‘I'd better go, I think, it's late.'

Greg looked at him in despair. ‘Bruno, you must be the meanest, most annoying person I have ever met.'

‘I hope so, I hope so,' said the old man. ‘Help me down the stairs, dear boy.'

Greg assisted him into his coat and down to the street where he flagged down a taxi. ‘I'll see you after Christmas,' Bruno said.

Immediately after the meeting with Bruno, Greg visited
Somerset House to see if Sally's death had been recorded under her married name. It hadn't. But then, he thought, she might have married again after the divorce – if there had been one, but as yet he didn't even know that.

And now he must wait until after Christmas to hear more.

Greg and Katherine sped down the motorway, past fields full of freezing fog on either side, then turned off on to a narrow hedge-overhung road. Two miles further on they reached the village of Norfield Fitzcrewe.

On its outskirts stood the traditional enclave of council housing, low red-brick houses with dustbins and bicycles in the front gardens, cars and motorbikes parked outside. Then they entered the old village. There was a green, covered in frost-spiked grass, with a frozen pond and a great chestnut tree. On one side of the green was a church; around it lay old houses, well tended and preserved, a shop, a post office and a pub.

Beside the church they took a road leading through trees for half a mile, then turned up a drive. In front of the house, a low, Georgian building of old red brick, was a half-circle, also of red brick, and there Greg left the car. As he got their luggage from the boot he heard Katherine cry, ‘Mrs Chambers – so glad to see you're still here.'

He turned round to see her greet a short, plump woman in an overall. He got the bags and followed them in.

‘Would you mind taking them straight up?' Mrs Chambers asked him. ‘Mr Ledbetter's put you in your old room, Katherine.'

‘Oh, goody,' said Katherine, ‘the green room. At the top of the stairs, Greg. We'll be in the drawing room – that way,' and she pointed.

Greg struggled upstairs to a long landing with many doors and arched windows at either end. He opened the heavy, varnished door opposite him. He found a bright, spacious room, papered in green, containing a broad double bed with a carved modern headboard. Another door revealed a bathroom in what presumably had once been a dressing room. The windows looked out over the garden, with a line of trees at its end. Inside the room, radiators flung out warmth. Greg, who had suspected that Chapel Manor Farm might be a cold, run-down farmhouse inhabited by an elderly madman, was cheered. He put down the bags and went to meet his host.

In the drawing room Simon Ledbetter sat in a big chair in the long, bright room beside a roaring fire. Beside him stood an electric wheelchair. He was a thin, heavily lined man, with a shock of thick white hair. He wore a blue polo-necked sweater, and brown corduroy trousers covered his skinny legs. Katherine stood at a large window, which overlooked the garden.

Simon raised a hand in greeting. ‘Greg,' he said, ‘Kate will get you a drink. Lunch will be ready soon.'

Katherine went to a sideboard on which bottles stood on a tray and asked, ‘Whisky, Uncle Simon?'

‘Good to meet you,' said Greg, crossing the room and shaking hands.

He sat down opposite Simon.

‘It's good to have you here,' Simon said to them. ‘You've saved me from a long, lonely Christmas. It'll probably be rather quiet for you as I haven't arranged anything.'

‘We can go to the pub this evening, then,' Katherine said.

‘If you don't mind Julia Wells,' he said.

‘Is she still after you?' Katherine asked.

‘I'm afraid so. She seems undeterred at the prospect of marrying a cripple. Can you imagine us, her overweight in a bridal gown, and me in my wheelchair, advancing up the aisle at St Tim's? What a spectacle. She's always telling me how lonely I must feel. Of course, she's usually a bit drunk – been married three times already. You'd think she'd have learned.' He turned to Greg. ‘Life's so hectic in the country, one way and another. I often think it would be more peaceful to return to London.'

‘You'd never do that,' Katherine told him.

‘I suppose not. I'm too comfortable. Potty old Adie Robinson and his wife have moved down here. They're coming to Christmas lunch. It's rather a bore but I owe them a meal and you know what it's like in the country. You have to get on with neighbours,' he explained to Greg. ‘If you can't get the company you like you have to like the company you've got.'

‘Has his wife still got those sheepdogs?' Katherine asked.

‘Worse than that. She's breeding them. They won't bring them, though. I've explained I'm allergic to furry animals. I don't think she believes me but she has to accept it in case I swell up and choke. They do make me swell up and choke, as it happens, but with rage – noisy, brainless things. You must go up to the tor after lunch. It's an Ancient Britons' burial mound,' he explained to Greg. ‘They're planning to excavate it next year.'

‘Do you want them to?' asked Katherine.

‘Not particularly. I've lived here for twenty years and never felt the slightest curiosity about it. Not my thing, really. I hear you're a bit of an historian,' he said to Greg.

‘I don't go as far back as that,' Greg informed him. ‘I'm only in the Second World War at the moment.'

‘It's far more dangerous to dig about in the near-present,' remarked Simon. ‘At least if one excavates old mounds all one finds are some bones, a torque and some mysterious cult objects which may never be understood properly.'

‘Your interest must be more in art, sir,' said Greg, who had been looking about him and seen what he thought were paintings by Sidney Nolan and Lucian Freud. There were also some Chinese pots, one on a table, one on a long sideboard, and a glass cabinet containing smaller oriental items, some plates, a figurine.

‘I have got one or two things,' his host told him, in a way that discouraged further comment.

Mrs Chambers came in and told them lunch was ready. Simon deftly shifted himself into his electric chair and set off through the door, across the hall and into the dining room. Mrs Chambers served cold salmon, hot potatoes and salad. A dessert and cheese lay on a side table. Then she said goodbye.

‘Chambers died, caught something from one of his animals, they believe,' Simon said, after she had left. ‘It makes you think.'

‘Oh dear. Who does the garden now?' Katherine asked.

‘Contractors,' he told her. ‘They send round burly boys in shorts, and it all works rather well. They do exactly as you say because they don't know anything about it. I feel rather guilty, but I prefer it to having Chambers bossing me about. The roses have never been better. Now, tell me what you're doing, Kate.'

‘Muddling on. I've got extra work next year. They've had to get rid of somebody, Peggy Corrigan, early retirement, so I'm taking on all her work.'

‘Can you manage?'

‘Got to,' she said.

‘What about your research?'

‘I'll have to keep it up somehow,' Katherine said, not very hopefully.

‘Now I can see what's going on I'm glad I got out,' Simon said.

‘What was your—' Greg asked.

‘Medical research. I was working on enzymes when a relative left this place to me with enough to keep it up. I hesitated about giving up the job. I was at Churchill and
only in my forties, but by that time this was happening,' he gestured below the table, at his legs, ‘so I resigned.' He paused. ‘It's a decision I'm still not sure about,' he said.

‘It's the if-onlys that get to you,' Greg observed.

‘I doubt if you've accumulated many of those yet.'

‘He may be in the middle of one,' interjected Katherine, with a disloyal laugh. Her manner changed in the presence of her uncle, Greg noticed. He'd met her parents, a solid couple who lived near Birmingham, her father a doctor. With them she was meek and slightly subdued; with her uncle her tone was sharper, more worldly.

That afternoon they walked up a footpath to the tor, which stood in an empty field about a mile from the house. They paused, looking down at a composed vista of fields, hedgerows and trees. A small river ran peacefully through it.

‘Is this part of your uncle's land?' asked Greg.

‘It ends there. The boundary's the riverbank,' she replied. ‘He's so lucky to have it.'

‘Who was the relative who left it to him?'

‘It was some kind of cousin,' she said.

‘You said it was a lover.'

‘Well, we thought he might have been both.'

‘Ah,' said Greg.

‘If we go back that way,' Katherine said, gesturing towards the river, ‘we can stop for tea in Merricombe.'

They strolled along the banks, by willows. ‘Was the reorganisation that bad?' asked Greg. ‘Does it really mean a problem with your research?'

‘Oh yes,' she assured him. ‘I'm pretty sure the post we
lost might easily have been mine. ‘It's an arena. Be grateful you're in a system where money counts, publication is a measure of your work and everybody knows the rules.'

Greg, who was all too aware of the academic's need to publish, asked, ‘Did you mean it when you told your uncle I might be in a position I could regret later?'

‘Don't say you haven't thought it yourself.'

‘No pain, no gain,' Greg said bravely.

‘What happens if it falls through?' Katherine asked.

‘Well, thank you,' he said. ‘That's a really encouraging thing to say.'

‘It must have crossed your mind.'

Greg was silent for a moment, wrestling with anger. Of course Katherine was right to think he might have had doubts about his project. But it might have been kinder not to have mentioned it, especially in front of her uncle. He fought down a sharp response.

She continued, ‘What have you got, after all? Just that old man, who may be potty or have some ulterior motive. You know what the old are like when it comes to distorting the past to make themselves look important or pay off some ancient grudge. And otherwise – nothing.'

‘Why are you doing this?' he asked.

‘What
have
you got, then?' she challenged.

‘And why are you doing this?' he repeated. He wanted to walk away from her, but it would have been ridiculous and, in any case, where would he go? Back to her uncle's house?

‘If we're going to argue,' she said, ‘it'll be a rotten Christmas.'

They had reached a path leading off from the river by a little bridge. She tucked her arm through his. ‘Sorry,' she said.

‘That's OK. And you're right anyway. I do sometimes have doubts,' Greg told her, as they set off along the path.

‘I'm sure it'll be marvellous. Have you got some new stuff?'

He thought of that line drawing of Sally, head turned, back bent under her mail sack, the slash of black that was her lipsticked mouth. He had brought it with him, in the bottom of his travel bag, he didn't know why. He thought of Katherine, whose arm was in his, of her lithe, thin body, her long, fine, pale face, the abundant, fox-coloured hair. He realised he was comparing the two women, the flesh and blood one he was with and the other, long dead, two-dimensional, a mere line on a piece of paper drawn by a lover. He almost groaned, realising he didn't want to talk about Sally Bowles to this woman who wasn't Sally Bowles.

After tea at Merricombe and a good walk back his mood improved. He and Katherine went upstairs then, to snooze before dinner and make love.

They lay, chatting, and he told her about Eugene.

‘That's wonderful!' she exclaimed. He got up and found the picture. Katherine lay back, scrutinising it. ‘She must have been really something.'

‘That's the impression I have. Now I've got to find Eugene, if he's still alive.'

‘I don't suppose he will be.'

‘He'd be in his early eighties. But everyone else I've spoken to has been about that age. A tough generation. I've written to his family's lawyers.'

‘Where are they?'

‘In Atlanta. It looks like a respectable firm.'

‘Well,' said Katherine, ‘you
have
done your stuff.'

Supper had been laid out in the kitchen by Mrs Chambers and was heated and served by Katherine and Greg. Over the meal Katherine started Greg off on the story of Eugene. Simon appeared interested and asked questions. Katherine ran up to get the picture of Sally, which he admired. ‘There's talent there,' he said.

Over coffee Simon said, ‘Now, chaps, if we can drag ourselves into the dull present, will you wrap me up warmly and push me to the pub?'