Almost a Crime (38 page)

had virtually disappeared. The pain in her stomach,

increasing in intensity by the moment, felt almost pleasurable.

She would know what to do next time; it had been

really really easy.

‘Sandy! What do you think?’

Sandy looked up, surprised at the tone in Louise’s voice.

For the first time for weeks, she sounded upbeat, cheerful,

her real self.

‘This one?’ she said, putting a large black straw hat on her

head. ‘Or maybe—’ removing it, replacing it with a silk

turban — ‘this?’

‘Well,’ he said carefully, ‘they’re both very nice. I don’t

know. Does it really matter?’

‘Of course it matters! This is Mummy’s last party.

Everything’s got to be right for her.’

‘Louise,’ said Sandy, ‘you’re talking about your mother’s

funeral. Not a party. She — well, she won’t …”

‘Won’t what, Sandy? She won’t what?’

‘Won’t be there,’ he said, very quietly, afraid of saying it,

afraid not to.

Louise walked forward, right up to him, stared up at his

face; her own, under the black silk turban, was very white,

very set. She raised her hand and struck him hard, across the

face.

‘Don’t!’ she said. ‘How dare you say such a thing? Of

course she’ll be there. She’ll know. She’ll want it to be

right.’

And then she stared up at him, horror in her eyes, and

burst into tears and said, ‘God, I’m sorry, Sandy. So, so

sorry. I’m just so tired. Tired of trying to be brave, to be

positive. Please forgive me.’

She put her arms round him; he could feel her thin body

straining, pressing against his, felt almost repulsion for her.

Then he hauled himself together, put his arms obediently

round her.

‘I forgive you,’ he said, ‘of course I do. I know how

upset you are, how awful this all is for you. I understand.’

‘I

know she won’t be there,’ she said, leaning against

him, her voice thick with tears. ‘I know that, that’s why it’s

so awful. That’s why I’m trying to concentrate on other

things. Like the flowers, and the food, and - and my hat.

And who’s coming. Anything except her not being there;

or rather her being there, in her coffin. And then going into

the ground. You know why she wants that, don’t you, wants to be buried, not cremated?’

‘No,’ he said, because he knew she wanted to tell him.

‘So she can go back into the earth, still be here, part of

things. She said she’d really like to be buried in the orchard,

where we all had such lovely times. Become part of the

trees. But she said that would upset Daddy, and I think it

would. So—’ She seemed about to tell him something else,

but stopped. ‘So anyway, that’s why.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’d feel like that.’

‘Would you?’ She stared up at him, genuine astonishment

in her face. ‘Would you really? I’d have thought

you’d be all for the neat and tidy way.’

‘Yes,’ he said just slightly coolly. ‘Well, perhaps you

don’t know me quite as well as you think you do, Louise.

I’m always telling you that. Now, have you decided about

Dickon? Whether he should be there, in the church?’

‘He should be there,’ said Louise. ‘Not at the burial, but

at the funeral, at the church. That’s what I’ve decided. I

don’t think children should be shielded from death. I think

they should see it as part of life. It always used to be that

way. She was his granny, he adored her. He wants to come,

he told me so.’

‘He might have” told you that. He hardly knows what it

means. What he’s in for.’

‘He’s not in for anything, Sandy. It’ll be lovely, all the

flowers, all the friends, the hymns. He’d think something

strange and horrible was going on if he couldn’t come.

Surely you can see that.’

‘Well …’

‘And I know Mummy would have wanted him there. So

you’re outnumbered.’ She managed a smile, touched his

face gently, where she had struck him. ‘I’m so sorry, sorry I

hit you. Forgive me?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Thank you. Now, I think I’ll take both hats, and decide

at the last minute,’ said Louise, moving out of his arms,

going over to the door. ‘Will you be ready by teatime, Sandy? I do want to get over there for supper. Daddy’s going to have trouble getting through this evening.’

‘Yes, Louise,’ said Sandy with a sigh, ‘I’ll be ready by

teatime.’

God, he’d be glad when this was over. At least she was

looking better. Less - well, less how she looked when she

was pregnant. Which of course she wasn’t. Of course she

couldn’t be. It had obviously been the strain of looking after

her mother that had made her so ill. Obviously.

Marianne was lying in the bath; she felt low. Romilly’s

concert had gone well, she had played beautifully, got a lot

of applause. A vast bouquet of flowers had been delivered

from her father: the four of them had all gone out to dinner,

but when they had got home, she had flown to check the

answering machine, come back looking faintly sulky, kissed

her mother briefly, said thank you for a nice evening, and

gone up to her room. A month ago, she would have been

starry with pleasure and excitement, talking the evening

over again and again, giggling, refusing to go to bed;

Marianne would”not have believed so great and so swift a

change possible. It hurt: it hurt a lot. For the hundredth

time she cursed her weakness in not stopping the whole

wretched modelling thing before it had begun: for not

listening to Zoe. She was worried about Zoe too, she

seemed so secretive and moody. And now she had to drive

almost a hundred miles to go to the funeral of a woman she

had hardly known, in order to please Felix’s daughter. It

was extremely hard.

The phone rang in her bedroom; she ignored it. The

answering machine would pick it up.

‘Mum!’ Zoe appeared in the doorway, with an irritatingly

knowing expression on her face, ‘Mum, it’s your

boyfriend.’

‘Zoe, you mustn’t call Felix my boyfriend, you know it annoys him,’ said Marianne, struggling to sit up, covering her breasts with her arms, thinking, half amused, that it was

almost impossible to express disapproval of your grownup

daughter with your nipples showing.

‘It’s not Felix. It’s someone called Nico Cadogan. Very dark brown voice. You want to ring him back or not?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’ll ring him back,’ said Marianne, trying to

sound calm and unflustered. ‘But he’s not my boyfriend!’

‘Okay, okay. The one you had the hots for the other day.

I’ll tell him you’ll call back. Oh, and Felix is here.’

‘Here! But it’s only just after nine.’

‘I know. He’s in the drawing room, reading the papers.

Hey, talking of the papers, did you know Versace had been

murdered? Hideous, or what?’

‘No, how dreadful,’ said Marianne. ‘I had no idea.’

‘Well, now you do. Anyway, Felix said to tell you he

didn’t want to be late.’

He didn’t want to be late, because it would upset

Octavia, thought Marianne savagely, and then stopped

herself. What an unpleasant thing to think; of course he

didn’t want to be late, it was a funeral, for heaven’s sake.

‘Tell him I’ll be ten minutes. And yes, tell Mr Cadogan

I’ll ring him back.’

Nico was clearly amused by Zoe. ‘She said you were in the

bath. I’d like to see you in the bath. I will one day, quite

soon, I imagine.’

‘Nico, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. Of course

you’re not going to see me in the bath. It’s ridiculous.’

‘Well, we shall see. Now then, I thought you might like

to have dinner with me tonight.’

‘Nico, I can’t possibly. Felix and I are going to a funeral.’

‘I’m sorry. Whose?’

‘The mother of an old friend of Octavia’s.’

‘Ah. Was she very close to you?’

‘I only met her once,’ said Marianne. That was a mistake.

‘And you’re going to her funeral? Why? Was Felix a

great friend of hers also? Or is this a further example of your

being dragged into his love affair with his daughter?’

‘Felix was a great friend. So of course I must go.’

‘I see. Well, I hope it’s not too sad for you. I shall be

thinking of you. Where is it?’

‘In Gloucestershire.’

‘And are you going with Octavia and Tom?’

‘No. Octavia said it would be better if we were all

independent. Tom has a meeting later today and—’

‘Tom and his meetings. I was just talking to him, as a

matter of fact.’

‘What news of the takeover?’ said Marianne.

‘None whatsoever. Well, should you get back early, give

me a ring. Otherwise tomorrow evening perhaps?’

‘Nico, no, I can’t.’

‘Of course you can. You needn’t think I’m giving up on

this campaign. I’ll ring you again tomorrow morning. I

might even get some more intimate details about you from

your daughter. Goodbye, Marianne.’

She was still smiling, slightly foolishly, as she sat down in

front of the mirror to put on her make-up. She felt better.

Romilly would settle down again: of course she would.

And Felix … they had these ups and downs from time to

time. They had.-always managed to settle down peacefully

again. There was no reason to think this one was any

different.

Octavia stood in the small village church, her eyes fixed on

Anna’s coffin, with its heap of white roses and lilies, and

willed herself not to cry. If Louise could be brave — and she

was being hideously brave, had come over to her and Tom

in the church, and kissed them both, thanked them for

coming, smiling almost radiantly at them — so could she.

Charles Madison stood beside Louise, ramrod straight, his

eyes fixed directly ahead of him, and little Dickon, smiling

rather tremulously across at her now, was between Louise

and Sandy. A strange decision to have him here, in the

church, when he had been so upset about his little sister’s death. Probably Sandy thought he ought to learn to cope with such things. A bit of army discipline. He was ramrod

straight too, equally stiff lipped; how alike they were, Sandy

and Charles, in some ways, and how alike Anna and Louise.

The two Madison brothers, Benjy and Giles, and their

pretty, Sloaney wives were in the pew behind and the small

church was very full.

They had already sung one hymn; the vicar had read the

lesson, the inevitable 23rd Psalm, then he said, ‘And now

Louise will read from St Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians.’

Octavia was stunned; here was Louise, wrung with grief,

unable to speak on the phone the evening before for tears,

standing up, perfectly composed, looking beautiful, in a

black silk long-sleeved dress, her fair hair a halo under her

black straw hat, smiling round the church at them all before

beginning to read. Her voice was steady and musically clear,

with the slight huskiness that made it so recognisable.

Irrelevantly, Octavia remembered Louise saying with a

laugh that she could never make an anonymous phone call

to any man she knew because her voice was so recognisable.

She had mixed the texts of the King James’s Version and

the New English Bible to great effect, her voice ebbing and

flowing with the music of the phrasing: ‘Though I speak

with the tongues of men and of angels — now we see

through a glass, darkly …’ Octavia felt at that moment she

knew exactly where it was, her heart, or at any rate, the

notional heart that was the centre of her feelings, so deeply

and heavily did it hurt. And when Louise finished, when

she reached the lovely end, ‘And now abideth faith, hope,

and love—’ there was a long pause — ‘but the greatest of

these is love.’

For a long, long moment Louise stood there, in the sunlit

silence of the church. Octavia looked at Tom, and saw that

he too was deeply moved, was looking down at his hands,

plaiting his fingers together, and just for a moment she

forgot everything — his betrayal of her, her hatred of him — and felt only that she still loved and needed him and then the moment finally ended, and Louise stepped down from

the lectern. The organ started again and a small boy’s voice sang out from the shadows of the choir stalls with ‘God Be

in my Head’, and then there were prayers, and then it was

over, and they were carrying the coffin out of the church

again. Octavia looked at it, and thought, all that was

happiest of my childhood is there, in there, with Anna, and

then thought that was disloyal to her father and looked up

at him, smiling, fleetingly anxious lest he should have read

her mind. His own face was sombre, heavy, but softened as

he looked at her; and Marianne looked thoughtfully,

sweetly sad, her green eyes smudged with tears. They could

hardly be for Anna, Octavia thought, she had hardly known

her; but then funerals did that, revived other sadnesses,

prompted tears for other pain. As this had done for her; it

had not been only for Anna she had wept, as the coffin was

carried in.

Outside the church Louise was moving from group to

group, being kissed, having her hand shaken, patted, held,