Airs Above the Ground (2 page)

As soon as the words were out I regretted them; I had been thinking only of Timothy, and of somehow persuading Carmel to do what would in the end hurt herself and the son the least; but now I remembered what my mother had been speaking about, and was afraid I had cut rather near the bone. But I need not have worried. People like Carmel are impervious to criticism simply because they can never admit a fault in themselves. She could see no reference to her own triple domestic tragedy, because nothing would ever persuade her to believe that any part of it was her fault; any more than those people who complain of being unloved and unwanted ever pause to ask if they are in fact lovable.

She said: ‘You haven’t any children, of course. Doesn’t Lewis want them?’

‘Have a heart. We’ve not been married all that long.’

‘Two years? Plenty of time to start one. Of course,’ said Carmel, ‘he’s not at home much, is he?’

‘What have my affairs and Lewis’s got to do with this?’ I asked, so sharply that she abandoned whatever tack she had been starting on.

‘Only that if you had children of your own you wouldn’t be so gay and glib.’

‘If I had children I hope I’d have the sense not to put
fences round them.’ That I still spoke sharply was not entirely due to exasperation with Carmel; the trend of this futile conversation was, minute by minute, reminding me of the fences that only a short while ago I had been trying to put round Lewis. I added: ‘Besides, Timothy isn’t a child, he’s what? Seventeen? I think it’s you who don’t understand, Carmel. Boys grow up.’

‘If they didn’t grow
away
so. My baby son, it seems only yesterday—’

‘When does his father want him to go?’

‘Whenever he likes. And of course he’s wild to go.’ She added, with a spite that sounded suddenly, shockingly genuine: ‘As a matter of fact I don’t mind him
going
. I just don’t want him to feel he owes it to Graham.’

I counted ten and then said mildly: ‘Then send him off straight away, and let him think he owes it to you.’

‘I might, if I thought—’ She checked herself, with a quick look I couldn’t read. She was fiddling rather consciously again with the bosom of her dress, not her heart this time, but what lay more or less directly over it, the very beautiful sapphire and diamond brooch that had been one of Graham Lacy’s guilt offerings to her. Then she spoke in quite a different tone: ‘As a matter of fact, Vanessa, I’m sure you’re right. I
ought
to let him go. One ought to make oneself realise that one’s babies grow up, and that one’s own feelings hardly matter. After all, they have their lives to live.’

I waited. It was coming now, if I was any judge of the signs.

‘Vanessa?’

‘Yes?’

She pricked her finger on the brooch, said a word which one never imagines that one’s mother’s generation ever knew, blotted the bead of blood on her table napkin, and met my eyes again, this time with a steely determination which didn’t quite match the suppliant’s voice she used. ‘I did wonder if you could help me?’

‘I? But how?’

‘I really do agree with all you’ve said, and as a matter of fact it would suit me quite well to have Timmy away for a little while just now, and I really
would like
to let him go, but you see, Timmy is such a
young
seventeen, and he’s never been away from home before, except to a school camp, and that’s different, isn’t it? And I can’t go with him myself, because it would be quite
impossible
. . . meeting Graham . . . I don’t mean I wouldn’t
willingly
sacrifice myself for him, but he was really quite rude when I suggested it, and if he did go off with Graham then
I’d
be on my own, and I hate foreign countries, they’re so uncomfortable, besides not speaking English, and you can say what you like, I’m not going to let that child go alone among foreigners. So then I thought of you.’

I stared at her. ‘Now I really don’t understand.’

‘Well, it’s quite simple. I knew you’d been going on holiday with Lewis this month, and then he had to go on business instead . . .’ Being Carmel, she couldn’t, even when she wanted a favour from me, quite repress that look of malicious curiosity . . . ‘But I did think you’d probably be joining him later, and if you were,
then if you and Timmy could travel together it would solve everything, don’t you see?’

‘No, I don’t. If Graham’s in Vienna, I can’t see how I—’

‘The thing is, you’d be
there
, and you’ve no idea what that would mean to me. I mean, just letting him go off like that to meet Graham, with no idea of what their plans were or anything, and Timmy never writes, you know what boys are, and of course I’d sooner not be in touch with Graham myself, at
all
. But if I knew you and Lewis were somewhere around – I mean, Lewis must know his way about in foreign countries by now, and I expect he’s fairly reliable on the whole, isn’t he?’

She made it sound a rather doubtful quality. Just then Lewis was at rock bottom in my estimation, but I defended him automatically. ‘Naturally. But I can’t go with Tim, I’m afraid . . . No, Carmel, please listen. It isn’t that I wouldn’t do it like a shot if I were going to Vienna, but we’re going to Italy for our holiday, and besides—’

‘But you could join him in Vienna first. It would be more fun, wouldn’t it, and salvage a bit of the holiday you’ve missed?’

I stared at her. ‘Join him in Vienna? But – what do you mean? We can hardly ask Lewis—’

‘If it’s the fare, dear,’ said Carmel, ‘well, since you’d be sort of convoying Timmy, I’d expect to take care of that.’

I said with some asperity: ‘I think I could just about manage it, thank you.’

It was one of Carmel’s most irritating characteristics to assume that everyone else was penniless, and that Lewis, who made what seemed to me a very good thing indeed out of his chemical firm, would hardly have been able to afford a car if it hadn’t been run on an expense account. But then, my standards were not Carmel’s. I added dryly: ‘I expect I’d be able to swop the tickets.’

‘Then why not? What’s to stop you joining him out there, once his business is finished? It would save him having to come back here for you, and you’d get the extra time, and a bit of extra fun, too. I mean, I’d be happy to stand you both the difference in the fares. But you can see that it did seem the most marvellous piece of luck that Lewis was in Austria, and you might be thinking of joining him? As soon as I knew, I rang you up.

‘Carmel. Look, stop these wonderful plans and just listen, will you? I’m not likely to be going to Vienna, now or later, for the simple reason that Lewis is not in Austria. He’s in Sweden.’

‘In Sweden? When did he leave Austria?’

‘He didn’t. He’s been in Sweden all along. In Stockholm, if you want to know. He went on Sunday, and I heard from him on Monday.’

I didn’t add that the only message in four days had been a very brief cable. Lewis was as capable as I was of holding tightly to a quarrel.

‘But you must be wrong. I’ll swear it was Lewis. And Molly Gregg was with me, and Angela Thripp, and they both said, “Oh, that’s Lewis March!” And it was.’

I said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Well, yesterday.’ She made it sound as if I was merely being stupid, as I had been over Timothy. ‘We were shopping, and there was an hour to Angy’s train and we wanted somewhere to sit, so we went to the news cinema, and there was something – a disaster or something, I simply can’t remember what – but it was Austria somewhere definitely, and Lewis was in it, as plain as plain, and Molly said to me, “Oh, that’s Lewis March!” and Angela said, “Yes, look, I’m sure it is!” And then the camera went closer and it was, I’m quite certain it was. So of course I thought straight away of you, and I thought you might be going there too, any day, so when Tim got too maddening and sulky about it, I rang you up.’

I must have been looking more stupid even than she had been implying. ‘You’re telling me you saw Lewis, my husband Lewis, in a news reel of something happening in Austria? You can’t have done, you must be mistaken.’

‘I’m never mistaken,’ said Carmel simply.

‘Well, but he can’t be—’ I stopped. My blank protestations had got even through Carmel’s absorption in her own affairs: in her eyes I could see the little flicker of malicious curiosity flaring up again. In imagination I could hear Angela and Molly and Carmel and the rest of them twittering over it . . . ‘And he’s gone off and she didn’t know, my dears. Do you suppose they had a row? Another woman, perhaps? Because she obviously hadn’t the
faintest
idea where he was . . .’

I glanced at my watch. ‘Well, I’ll have to be going, honestly. I wish I could help you, I do really, but if Lewis has been in Austria somewhere it would just be a flying trip down from Stockholm. You wouldn’t believe the way they push him about sometimes. I never know quite where he’ll turn up next . . .’ I pushed back my chair. ‘Thanks awfully for the tea, it was lovely seeing you. I must say I’m intrigued about this news reel . . . Are you absolutely certain that it was Austria? Whereabouts, do you remember? And can’t you remember what was happening? You said – a disaster . . .’

‘I tell you, I can’t remember much about it.’ She was rather pettishly fishing in her bag for her purse. ‘I wasn’t really noticing, I was talking to Molly, and it was only when Lewis came on . . . Well, that’s that, I suppose. If you’re not going, you’re not going, and Timmy can’t go either. But if you change your mind, or if you hear from him, you’ll let me know, won’t you?’

‘Of course. If you’re right, there may be something waiting for me at home.’ I hesitated, then said, I hoped casually: ‘Which cinema was it, did you say?’

‘Leicester Square. And it was him, it really was. We all recognised him straight away. You know the way he has.’

‘I know all the ways he has,’ I said, more dryly than I had meant to. ‘At least, I thought, I did. And you really can’t remember what was happening?’

She was busy applying lipstick. ‘Not really. Something about a circus, and a dead man. A fire, that was
it, a fire.’ She put her head to one side, examining the curve of her rouged lips in the tiny mirror. ‘But it wasn’t Lewis who was dead.’

I didn’t answer. If I had, I’d have said something I’d have been sorry for.

The news theatre was dark and flickering, and smelt of cigarettes and wet coats. I made my way blindly to a seat. At this time of day the place was half empty, and I was glad of this, as it meant that I could slip into a back row where I could sit alone.

A coloured cartoon was in progress, with animals quacking and swaggering across the screen. Then came some sort of travelogue; Denmark, I think it was, ‘Hans Andersen’s country’, but I sat through it without seeing it. It seemed a long time before the news came round, and longer still before we had done with the big stuff, the latest from Africa, the Middle East, the Grand Prix, the Test . . .

All at once there it was. ‘Circus Fire in Austrian Village . . . Sunday night . . . Province of Styria . . . An elephant loose in the village street . . .’ And the pictures. Not of the fire itself, but of the black and smoking aftermath in the grey of early morning, with police, and grey-faced men in thick overcoats huddled round whatever had been pulled from the wreck. There was the circus encampment in its field, the caravans, mostly streamlined and modern, the big top in the background, and behind it a glimpse of a pine-covered hill, and the glint of a white-washed church tower with an onion spire. In the foreground
was a screen – a sort of temporary hoarding – with advertising matter pasted on it; a photograph I couldn’t see, some man’s name and something about ‘
Eine absolute Star-Attraktion
’, and then a list of prices. Then something must have shoved against the screen, for it fell flat on the trampled grass.

Yes, it was Lewis. He had been standing in the shelter of the screen, and for a moment, obviously, had no idea that the cameras were now on him. He was standing quite still, on the edge of the crowd that was watching the police, staring, like all of them, at the burnt-out wreck, and at something which lay still hidden from the cameras. Then he moved his head in the way he had – oh yes, I knew that way – and amazingly, I saw the expression on his face. He was angry. Quite plainly and simply angry. I was all too recently familiar with that anger . . . but there, where every other man wore the same expression either of solemn respect or of shocked horror, the anger was somehow incongruous and disturbing. And this quite apart from the fact that this was certainly Austria and not Sweden, and that on Monday morning I had had a cable from him from Stockholm . . .

There was a girl beside him. As she moved, I saw her beyond him. A blonde, young and rather more than pretty in that small-featured, wide-eyed way that can be so devastating, even in the early morning and dressed in a shiny black raincoat with a high collar. Her hair hung in long, fair curls over the glossy black collar, and she looked fragile and small and lovely. She was pressed close to Lewis’s side, as if for protection, and his arm was round her.

She looked up and saw the cameras on them both, and I saw her reach up and touch him, saying something, a quick whispered word that matched the intimate gesture.

Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, in that situation, would glance instinctively at the camera, before either facing it self-consciously, or turning out of its range. My husband didn’t even look round. He turned quickly away and vanished into the crowd, the girl with him.

In the same moment the circus field vanished from the screen, and we were inside a sagging canvas tent, where an elephant rocked solemnly at her moorings, apparently muttering to herself.

‘. . . the two dead men. The police continue their investigations.’ the commentator was saying, in that indifferent voice, as the picture changed again to a bathing beach on the South Coast of England . . .

The
Mirror
had it – a dozen lines at the bottom corner of page six, under the headline:
CIRCUS BLAZE RIDDLE
.

Police have been called in to investigate a fire which caused a night of terror in a small Austrian village near Graz. Elephants ran amok when a caravan belonging to a travelling circus took fire, knocking down and injuring a six-year-old girl, and causing havoc in the village. Two men who had been sleeping in the van were burned to death
.