Antman (27 page)

'That's an unusual twist,' said Helen. 'Most people view the summer as the on-season.'

'It's an academic view,' said Laura. 'Tom's view. It rubs off on me. I can't help it.'

Helen topped up their coffees from the cafetière. 'So Tom was seeing that clerk to the coroner they found dead.'

'What do you mean?' Laura's heart was racing.

Helen peered at her. 'Darling, are you all right? I hope I'm not creating problems.'

'Fine, thank you.' Helen was silent while she digested the information. It was a shock, even though she tried to shrug it off.

'You can love a man without being in love with him,' said Laura casually.

'You can also love more than one man simultaneously.'

'That applies to men as well as women.'

'Unfortunately,' said Helen, thinking of Robin.

'You love your friends, but you're in love with your partner,' said Laura.

'I hate that word partner,' said Helen. 'It sounds as though living together is a business.'

'It can be, whichever way you use the word. Tom's been a good husband,' she added thoughtfully, à propos of nothing in particular. 'But he's also been a selfish, self-centred bastard.'

'Snap.'

'He's in the past tense, as well?'

'Afraid so.'

Helen leaned forward and put her arm round Laura. 'I'm so sorry.'

'Don't be, not for me. I passed that stage some time ago.' Laura remained sitting stiffly. She couldn't soften to emotions, not in public, not in front of the world.

Helen leaned back slightly. Laura continued. 'There are compensations.'

'In Robin's case, tell me about them.'

'I thought things had improved.'

'In theory yes, but now he's abroad I can see more clearly. He's become bad news for me, in a big way.'

'You don't think –'

'With Robin, you don't think. That's it. What I mean is it's quite difficult to repair your relationship at a distance of a few thousand miles.'

'Looking on the bright side, distance sharpens desire,' said Laura.

'Or extinguishes it.'

'I bet when he returns he'll be all over you again. I'm the one with the burnt-out marriage.'

'Why say that? I see you as one of life's winners, whatever the defects in your marriage. Married to one of the most eminent academics in the field.'

'Unfortunately,' said Laura, 'you can't have a relationship with a research grant, or make love by e-mail.'

'Some academics seem to manage it,' said Helen.

'That's precisely the problem. They live in their bloody heads all the time.'

'Virtual reality.'

'Virtual death.'

Talking about Helen's situation chewed Laura up. There was so much she couldn't share with Helen, not least that she, too, had fancied Robin for some time. It was terrible to feel a conflict of loyalties. There was one question she had to ask, to help her resolve a particular uncertainty.

'Would you be devastated if Robin did stray again?'

Helen considered. 'In some ways I'd be relieved another woman had taken the decision out of my hands.'

'That's what I felt about Tom,' said Laura, 'though the situation has gone beyond that.'

Laura dropped Helen off on her own way home. She was mopping her eyes with a tissue as she drove up to the front of their own garage and parked.

'Why are you crying, Mummy,’ asked Matthew.

'Mummy isn't crying,' said Laura. 'She's got a fly in her eye.'

'Hmm! Both eyes, I suppose,’ snorted Matthew.

'Shut up, Matthew,' said Sarah, assuming the role of protector.

'I must have a cold coming as well,' explained Laura, vainly seeking an escape from further inquiry. I'll look such a terrible mess now, she thought. Please don't let there be any phone calls or visitors, certainly for the next hour, but preferably for the next two or three years, till this is sorted out. What am I thinking of, she chided herself. Then she was annoyed. It only took a few remarks by Helen to bring on a severe attack of self-pity.

*  *  *

Laura picked up the phone. Before she met Helen she had no intention of contacting Tom. Now she dialled his number. She had to clear the air.

'What is going on, Tom? You didn't tell me you were seeing the murdered woman.'

'Who's that?' Tom was astonished, playing for time.

'The clerk to the coroner.'

'Who told you that?'

'Helen told me.'

'How does she know?' He regretted the words. They sounded like an admission. He tried to recover the ground. 'I had a bad feeling about Detlev. I arranged to meet her. The meeting never took place.'

For an air-clearing conversation, this is going averagely badly, she thought grimly.

'Someone's circling round, doing people in,' Tom explained. 'I wonder if it's connected with me and my Research Centre in some way I can't fathom at present.'

'You're having an affair.'

'I'm not.'

'You were at the time, even if you've finished it.'

'I wasn't, I never was.'

'You didn't tell me you were seeing her.'

'I wasn't seeing her, not that way. I had an odd feeling about Detlev's death, that was all. After the inquest, I rang her.'

'I fail to see why.'

'To see whether my doubt was shared among the court officers, I suppose.’

'I can't believe you'd be so naïve as to expect they'd be prepared to comment to a complete stranger on such a delicate matter.'

'I wasn't a complete stranger.'

'So you did know her.'

'I didn't.'

'But you'd spoken to her.'

'Yes.'

'When?'

'When I phoned.'

'Why did you phone?'

'To ask her to meet me.'

'You fancied her?'

'No.'

'Don't try to bluff me. I know you. What did her husband think?'

'I've no idea whether she even had one.'

'She'd have worn a wedding ring.'

'I wouldn't notice that day in the courtroom, would I?'

'It's the kind of detail women notice all the time. She was married.' Laura was thinking, why shouldn't I lie? She wanted to make Tom squirm. 'I've seen the husband on the telly. He's completely devastated, be in no doubt about that.'

'You think I don't feel guilty about it.'

'What time are you back for tea?'

Tom cursed inwardly. 'I won't be back till later this evening. I forgot to tell you I'm giving a lecture at Peterborough University.'

Laura slammed the phone down.

Chapter 18

Graver's looking across the table at the person opposite.

Can't see who it is.

It may be the Queen.

She's replicating herself in my head

nonsense says the larva.

nonsense says the voice in my head.

Is it a voice or a suppurating spore

He's repeating 'no' and deliberately not turning his head. But he can see his old man moving round behind and he knows what's coming, but this is part of the escape from the trap. You have to build up sufficient pressure, he tells himself, to break through. It's like the kids shaking those fizzy bottles, the big ones, and then unscrewing the tops real quick. Whoosh! Except that now he's said the word there's a further bunch of hurdles which weren't all there before, or at least some were, but weren't visible.

Even what you've rehearsed many times never turns out quite how you expect. 'No', he says, and looks around in amazement, as in the total silence which follows, all the clocks don't stop and the gas goes on making the pans on the stove bubble and as far as he can tell his heart is still beating, only now it's more like a massive drum. And his father's face, the cause of this global pause, is draining slowly from red to white and then back to purple as the blood pounds back, attempting to break through every vessel and failing by the whisker which would save Graver even now from the beating of his life.

He lay on the floor where mother Mary had pushed him and moaned and protested at first, while the blows kept falling on his legs, back and head. He dared not lift his head to see which of them was hitting him at any particular time. It was a funny thing to be trying to guess. He risked peeping a couple of times and was surprised – though relieved because it justified his hating her as well – to see her wielding the switch on one side of his body and him on the other. Later, as though his body realised there was a behavioural consequence, an increase in pain every time he made a movement or a sound, he stopped. So, through degrees of pain he learned to stay quiet, or quieter, since sometimes the pain was so wicked you couldn't help the sounds coming out, even when grinding your teeth together like brake blocks on the bicycle's rusty wheel.

Unpleasant he was, and old looking round the chins, to the point where Graver thought
isn't it about time you died, old man?
This was just the stray thought of a child in an idle moment. But it repeated itself in daydreams as such thoughts have a habit of doing.

The Bakery. Not Jerson's, Smithson's, Palmerston's or any such distinguishing label. It was known as The Bakery to everyone. And it provided Graver with his first experience of employment. And something else as well. There was a handful of young ones, among an army of women whose children were at school and who could work part-time through the day, and a smaller force mostly of men, who baked through the early hours of each night. The younger ones, with fewer domestic commitments so it seemed, covered from 7:00 a.m. when the night shift went off. It was the breaks which were educational for him. There was Betty and her twin sister Leila and a couple of lads, and him. At first he had no idea what the girls were giggling about and why, during morning and afternoon breaks, when they were in this giggly mood, one or another of them was always going off to the sheds with one of the lads.

*  *  *

I spent hours in the villa observing the ceaseless activity of the tiny Pharaoh's ant, with which the building apparently was infested.

I watched the endless files of ants moving like strips of dark material, escalator-style, night and day, along the floors, up the walls, along the ceilings, usually tucked into the edges and corners, but breaking out across open areas in order to reach their goal. This would invariably be some food source. It didn't seem to matter how small.

The ants had amazing powers of concentration in large numbers around their target. Even when only an occasional ant every few centimetres scurried along, I would suddenly come upon several hundred around some unfortunate grub, or perhaps a morsel of food – a scrap of bread, or the sugar bowl – I'd thoughtlessly left on the kitchen worktop the night before.

Greasy, suppurating spores invading the brain. Lost control of the brain to the invaders. I told the doctor I could feel them. He took no notice.