Blind Date (31 page)

P
hrumph, phrumph, phrumph, crash, bellow, crash: Flynn loved it. He told himself that the terrible racket was all to the greater glory of God, and yes, the talent was minimal, but the sound would become wonderfully orchestral when combined with the effects of their uniforms, next Remembrance day. The urban existence of a boys' band—albeit a unisex band, of which he did not entirely approve, although the girls kept the boys in order—created in his mind some sort of continuity with the noisy religion of his youth. Those were the days of folksy guitars; this was better.

A man was leaning against the wall by the open door. Flynn had caught sight of him earlier, gave him the big welcoming smile which was returned in full measure. Maybe he was a proud parent who liked to look in without being observed, moving round to get a better view of the offspring. Bit young for a dad of one of these, but you never knew. Maybe not a parent: maybe a talent spotter. Maybe someone with a nice commercial interest in church space and the cheque book to match. Flynn was sure he had seen him before.

“Can I help?”

“Oh, no. I just heard.
Came in for a look. Is that all right?”

“Course.”

“May I watch a bit longer?”

“Be our guest.”

Later, when the band dispersed with raucous relief, Reverend Flynn found to his annoyance that he had mislaid his jacket. Some little pig … Miss Jones had to use her key to lock up the church and there was nothing he could do about it now. His wallet was in his back pocket, there was someone at home and an urgent appointment to keep. Somehow the joy of the early evening had gone.

Then he saw it, draped over the bonnet of his car, hurried towards it, making the sign of the Cross out of sheer relief. God was good, after all. He looked up towards the windows of the tower, with a slight envy of the occupants, waved vaguely in their direction in case they were looking out at him. There was a light in there: it looked both remote and cosy, and the chill breeze made him shiver as he shrugged on the jacket, checking the sleeves first in case it was booby-trapped. There was something irritating his memory like an itch, about Joe, how it was he had come to be there in the first place. Was he the residue of the exhibition, or had he somehow just arrived with a message from Elisabeth? For the life of him, Flynn could not remember anything, except a guilty sensation about how vulnerable he was to the wide smiles of young men. He crossed himself again. God would forgive him and his fear. God had no choice.

“I
know why envy is a sin,” Elisabeth said. “It corrodes, like the rust on the bells. It makes the envier swell and then contract and then crack, one big crack or a million pieces. A sort of poisonous heat.”

“Are these philosophical
observations on the real world's example to man, or do you have something to say?”

“Caroline Smythe, of course. Oh I know envy is as common as mud in a farmyard, it's a question of degree. Do you see what I mean?”

He considered. “I don't know anything about envy. Never felt it, at least, not so much that it hurt. Passing envy, maybe. Jealousy, for a minute. What's the difference?”

“Envy is jealousy entering the bones, I think. Jealousy becomes envy when it begins to eat, when you can't shrug it off and it makes you hate the person you now envy. Makes you wish them harm. Is there any more of that? Oh, what a shame.”

“What a demanding little cat you are,” he remarked, pleasantly. “It could have been vintage and you drink it like water. Then ask for more.”

The music below had stopped. It was a long time since he had last eaten. She looked as if she never ate at all, but he knew better. She could eat like a trooper.

“Flynn waved at me,” he said. “Maybe we should have asked him up for a drink.”

“And have him think us a nice, cosy couple? Or have me say you're a trespasser, no use except for pulling corks and opening tins.”

“You don't mind what people think. What Flynn thinks.”

“I do,” she said. “I do mind what people think. I mind a lot.”

Joe's mobile phone bleeped. Elisabeth looked at it with distaste, as
if he had brought some unpleasant, scab-covered pet indoors.

“And you can get rid of that, too,” she said, handing it to him.

I
t was the Owl, slurring his words a bit, the phone distorting them even more. “Come on down, Joe, wherever you are. Me and Rob, having a drink.”

God save him from old mates. There was chatter in the background. Joe looked across at Elisabeth, about to suggest, come with me, but bugger it, he did not want that. She was studying the contents of the fridge, and he could count her vertebrae through her blouse. Rob would stare, Owl would be Owlish and he would be ashamed. Joe did a mental review of the tower. One way in, one way out. Three keys: Flynn swore there were only three, exhorting him to be careful.

“Where are you?”

“Where are we, Rob?” The music behind the chatter sounded as bad as the kids' band.

“Got something to tell yeeeou, Joe.”

“OK, OK, stay put.”

Elisabeth spoke from the fridge. “Friends of yours?” she asked.

“Old mates. The owl. I told you. Will you come with me?”

She shook her head adamantly. “You don't want me to come. I'd be in the way. And I don't particularly want to go anywhere with you. Besides, girls don't go with old mates. They'd clam up.”

“Please.”

“Oh bugger off, Joe. What is this? Do you think I'm not safe on my own here, after a few days with you? What gives you this fantastic right to bully me?”

“I don't think you're
safe anywhere. Look what you damn well do. Get mugged. Do exactly the opposite of what you say will—”

“Sod OFF.”

There was a regime for the keys, hers and the one Flynn had so willingly given him, both lay on the table. Big, old, difficult to replace, almost items of apparel rather than instruments. Joe could not look at the key to the sole entrance to the tower without thinking of a belted cassock, hung with similar keys. He simply did not want her going out alone. Gut instinct ruled on that one, so he took both the keys and took to the steps. He could forestall any adventure of hers simply by locking the door behind him. Hurry. In a while, Owl might fall off his perch.

She was shouting at him as he thumped down the stairs, the shout becoming inaudible as he closed the door behind him. That was the advantage of stone-built insulation: it prevented one from hearing a woman yelling, “Bastard! Bastard!” and other language of pure invective. All the same, Joe did feel he might have overplayed the charm.

Elisabeth was speechless with rage. Then she opened the second bottle of wine. The effort and sense of achievement absorbed the fury: there was a knack and she had found it. She forced herself into calmness. Talked out loud.

This was, after all, what she had wanted. Isolation in a safe place. She would have preferred a choice, but it was nice, in one sense, to be marooned without a choice. If that great, interfering, suspicious fool did not come back, she would simply phone Flynn in the morning and get herself let out. The situation was so ridiculous it was tempting to laugh and cry in turns. This is what someone should have done
with you eighteen months ago, girl. Locked you up.

The phone rang again. Hers this time, the only penetrating sound, shriller than that poxy, intrusive little mobile he had left behind. Revenge: dial the speaking clock in Australia on his mobile and leave it… She picked up her own phone, held it to her ear, barking into it.

Silence. Two more hallo hallos. More silence. A click, a tone. She dialled 1471, heard that familiar, metallic voice. You were called at… The caller has withheld their number. Her fingers, punching keys.

“Patsy? Was that you?”

“ ‘Lo. Me what? I am
not
me.”

Patsy was drunk. Cheerfully drunk. The kind of state which was suddenly devoutly to be wished.

“S
o I phoned this bird at her office, got no reply, first time. Then I got a sodding answermachine. Then I got some other bird, who said, sorry, the other one was in a meeting. So I said, you sound nice, can I talk to you instead? Got a date with
her
didn't I? Who needs a fucking agency? Stopped the cheque. Actually it bounced. You just haven't got the knack, have you, Owl?” Rob roared with laughter.

Just the two of them having an extended drink after work, Owl inveigled into it because he did not want to go home, Michael not to be found. Rob had decided that they needed Joe, and Owl was not willing to admit that he did not quite want to see Joe at the moment either, any more than he wanted to sit here with acid boiling away in his stomach and Rob sitting opposite with his ghastly, dated vernacular and his terrible traveller's tales, but there he was. Life might have been so very different if the women in
the office had been anything other than those two old bats. He was wondering, vaguely, how Rob actually lived, but it was difficult to concentrate. What Rob described as his bachelor pad was somewhere in the arse-end of somewhere else: the Owl could see it fully equipped with dirty pans and other signs of Rob's incipient laziness as well as his expectation that some other bugger did the mopping up. They never met at one another's houses. Houses and flats revealed too much.

Owl decided, wearily and blearily, that he did not like Rob and never really had. The same sort of realization had happened at school with contemporaries once revered and adored, the very stars in his firmament, until they took their feet of clay out of their football boots. It occurred to him that the only one of them who seemed capable of making independent decisions was fucking Joe. But he was not that keen on Joe either. Condescending git. Always bought his round. As he did now. Looming up out of nowhere, like trouble. Rob was talking about the agency, again. Had a cracker last night, Joe; worth every penny. Owl listened in disbelief. Trouble was, Rob never knew when he was lying. Relied on him not to point out the contradictions in every second breath.

“What's yours?”

“Pint.”

“Sure about that?”

“Ssh sure I'm sure.”

Fucking condescending git.

Owl wanted to say something about Michael. Along the lines of Michael, whom they all revered and adored like some fucking glamour-puss Hugh Grant, head boy pin-up
wanker
, was a bit of a fraud. Smooth bastard and so fucking mean he would pinch a mobile phone. Rob did it, too; Owl knew he did, but Rob had method. He would ask, can I make
a personal call, John, old chap? (personal, know what I mean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and then make three, but whatever fucking liberties he took, he did ask. Not long calls, either.

“No sign of Mike, then?”

“Got a date,” Rob said. “Smooth bastard. Secret life of Michael Jacobi, the boss. Now there's a story. Soon to sell in seventeen languages. Mostly Urdu.”

“Wanker,” said Owl. He felt rather than saw them turn on him in surprise.

“That's a rude word, Owly boy,” Rob said. “Tut, tut.”

“Why a wanker, Owl?” That was Joe. All fucking Joe ever did was ask fucking questions. His voice was like one long question mark. Owl shook his head, stirred his thoughts into one last burst of articulation. The last for a long time.

“ ‘Cos he uses people. ‘Cos he can't think. Haven't you noticed? He's a cyph cyph… psycophant. Tha's it. Psychopath… sycophant, wa's the difference. Never says a single original thing. Never. Funny, isn't it, how that stupid Jack used to hang on every word? That's what Mike makes,” and here Owl described with one hand the circle of the moon, shaped like a fractured saucer. “Never. Automatic Mick. Dick. Th'as why management love ‘im. Fucking echo. Rule-book genius. An' he uses my fucking phone to call his bloody mother! Mother? Did we know about a fucking mother? I bin going through the bills. This afternoon, I did, I did. First time she ever called me back. And he called me on
my
fucking phone, not the fucking office phone, when I was going to meet that bird. He was the one kept me late.” He nodded, significantly, towards Joe. According to his own arm, his pint glass had moved, so far over to the right he could scarcely detect it. There was a hand, which may have been Joe's, retrieving it.
A voice which was surely Rob's, laughing, and then Joe again, propping him upright. Speaking in his ear. “Go on, Owl, go on.”

He could not go on. That was it.

I
f she were to instal a chandelier, the bell ropes would have to go. The two would look bizarre together. As it was, the ropes made shadows. And it was no use pretending that wine was a route to oblivion. Perhaps nothing worked on a person in captivity, even though captivity, Jenkins said, was a relative concept. A release from strain: the captive no longer responsible for his, or her, own fate. The only way to benefit from captivity was to be resigned to it. Use it. I have been captive for months and months. I have been captive ever since Emma died. I may be a captive for the rest of my life. Drink meant nonsense and truth, in unequal proportions: she had no head for it any more.

Is it me he wants, the man who killed Emma? The ghost of Jack, does he want me? Did the man who killed Emma and a girl called Angela want something else entirely? Gem quality stones. Those stones her father had prized so much, he might have prayed towards their shrine, would surely have died for, and might, in another age have killed for. Might it be that, this illusion, that the man wants?

Joe. What does Joe want? He wants pictures. He has no means of sustenance. Maybe he has taken pictures of jewels. Craves them, too. Maybe just another thief.

She prowled. She nibbled cheese and thought irrelevantly of mice and their supposed love of cheese. Untrue, as far as she knew: they liked sticky toffee stuff with sugar uppermost and they loved warfarin, poor sods. Her initial fury with Joe filled her with the antidote of lassitude, plus wine, though not
much of the wine. She yawned and stretched and waited and went on prowling like the downstairs cat, up into the tower. It was cooler, up there.