Down in the City (17 page)

‘So Jeffries said all that, did he? Blah! Blah! Quite a mouthful!' He imitated David's portentous manner. ‘He must have come on a bit if he said all that.' He snickered at his own humour. ‘And just what are you going to do about it, anyhow, Mr Prescott? Not that I'm saying I'm as smart as all that, mind you.'

‘I'm going to ask you to give up this method of making money,' David said steadily.

‘Ha! That's a laugh! Ask away, Mr Prescott!' He suddenly dropped the pose of cocky assurance and leaned forward, his face contorted. ‘He told you nothing. He couldn't prove a thing. The dirty little—'

‘All right, all right. That will do,' David checked him abruptly. ‘You don't seem to understand. You are not being threatened. I realise very well that you are not likely to have allowed conclusive evidence—in the way of papers and so forth—to leave your person.'

‘Huh! Papers!' Stan scoffed and tapped his head. ‘It's all in here!'

‘In any case, from what he says, it seems clear that the police are aware of your activities—certain of them, at any rate. I doubt if much that Jeffries or I might say would be new to them, and if it were, I should not inform against you.'

‘I bet. Look good, wouldn't it? “Notable Solicitor Sends Brother-in-Law to Quod.”' He laughed. ‘Don't worry, Mr Prescott. You won't have the chance. They haven't been able to get anything on me yet, and they won't!'

David waited, and then, looking down, he asked, ‘What does Esther know?'

‘It's no concern of hers,' Stan drawled. ‘The trouble with Jeffries was he didn't know when he was well off. Starting to give me advice. Starting to get too interested.'

‘I'm talking about Esther.'

‘Are you? What about her?' Stan sneered, but his confidence was beginning to ebb.

David rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘I blame myself that she ever married you. I should have made more inquiries. I should have done a lot of things. What I'm asking you now is to give this up for her sake, if not your own, before you
are
involved with the police. You still have a chance. You aren't old. You must have money, and, I suppose, some kind of ability—though God knows it's been put to poor enough use.'

Stan gnawed at his thumbnail, remembering the good intentions he had had when he married Esther. He just hadn't got around to doing anything about them yet, that was all. ‘Why should I give it up? What harm does it do?' he asked sulkily, like a reprimanded schoolboy.

‘Ask yourself that. You'll know best.' David began to hope. ‘There can be no peace in the kind of life you lead. It's unnatural—it's all wrong,' he urged.

The telephone at his elbow tinkled, and they became aware that they were in a square, light room, high above the traffic. They found that they were more than voices and emotions existing in featureless space.

Stan shifted his position restlessly, and his mouth hardened in a downward curving line as David lifted the receiver.

‘Yes?…I thought I told you not to put calls through, Miss Burnett?…Very well.'

As they faced each other again, David saw by Stan's expression that he had lost his case, and with this knowledge came a slackening of effort. His shoulders sagged a little. ‘What have you decided?'

‘That you should mind your own bloody business and let me mind mine!'

David gave him a level look and clenched his teeth. ‘And you came here to tell me that you want to adopt two children! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. At least that fact convinces me that Esther hasn't taken the trouble to find out exactly how you support her. I hardly think she would have agreed to this plan if she had.'

‘Well, you're wrong if you think this'll make any difference to her. Try to mess things up for me and see how you get on. You won't see her again.'

‘I could wish you deserved her affection more.'

‘Well!' Stan jeered, surprised by the tacit admission of his power. ‘There's nothing you can do, is there? Or do you plan to tell her anyhow, just for the hell of it?'

David was unbearably provoked by the tone in Stan's voice that suggested that in some curious way he was gratified by the morning's events. And he did, in fact, feel a vicious satisfaction in no longer hiding the truth from David. The Prescotts, the mighty Prescotts, were dismayed, and a siren song of malice echoed in his brain.

‘Well,' he prodded. ‘Are you going to tell her?'

‘I don't know,' David said. ‘But I'll tell you one thing: don't try to adopt any children through any channels whatever, for I'll see to it that you don't succeed. I thank God that you haven't any of your own. What a father they'd have had,' he said bitterly. ‘A racketeer, a gambler, a cheat!'

‘Hey! Hey!' Stan stuttered, starting up from his chair, incensed. ‘Watch what you're saying! I won't take much more of this, you know.' He was undone with rage and mortification to find that, after all, he still had points to lose. In the midst of his fury he could have whimpered. Racketeer, gambler, cheat, what a father…

Blindly, through waves of hurt and shame, he floundered around for invective that would paralyse the man in front of him, but for once he failed to find it.

‘Remember what I've said. Be satisfied that you've involved my sister in your unsavoury life and don't try to drag children into the mess. The only other thing I have to say to you is: see that you treat Esther well. I'll leave it to you to think of an explanation for the failure of your scheme. I'll make sure that I don't speak to her until you've had time to tell her. And you'd better let me know what you've said.'

Already David was regretting his outburst. The thought that he was, however unwillingly, instrumental in denying Esther the right to children was painful. Now it was too late to retract, and Esther had wanted the children—not only Stan. How would he tell her?

He had been looking down at his desk, but now he raised his head and gazed at Stan, who stood transfixed with hatred.

At last, speaking thickly, with cold intensity, Stan said, ‘I'd like to see you dead!' He stood where he was a moment longer, then, wheeling round, strode out of the room and shut the door with a crash.

Clem came in as the outer door of the office banged, and his eyes questioned David as he seated himself on the edge of the desk.

‘I went too far,' David said. ‘I completely lost my temper. I should have let you handle it—you've always got on better with him. If I'd known why he was coming—they wanted to adopt some children…'

His brother screwed up his face. ‘Oh Lord!'

‘It was a good sign, wasn't it? You'd have thought I'd have bargained with him—the situation was perfect for it. But I didn't. Miss Burnett phoned through when I thought I had him…After that it was impossible: we were both abusive, and I was moral…'

Stan couldn't remember leaving the office, but suddenly he was outside. The humid air closed about him like a blanket wrung out in hot water. It was mildly comforting. He looked around with an angry, startled gaze, too distracted for a second to understand where he was. Then he knew. Near Martin Place. He crossed the road, relying on his fury to keep off the oncoming traffic, yet so lifted out of himself that he would have welcomed the chance to savage cars and occupants.

Forging through the lunchtime crowds, he reached the car and stood with his foot on the running board, but after a tumult of indecision he jerked back on to the footpath and pushed his way along to the Golden Reef. There, amidst the buzzing and the raucous shouts, with the sweet, beery smell, a glass in his hand and some whisky in his mouth, he could think and plan. But not straightaway, he counselled. Have a few first. Clear your head. He felt his chest contract with hate and high, wounded pain. I'll get even with that little…I'll…

A large ginger cat appeared and began to twine itself around his legs, knowing instinctively where it was not wanted. Smooth, smooth. It purred.

Looking down Stan saw it and lifted his foot with a jerk that sent the cat across the floor. It stalked to the other end of the bar, and, faintly mollified, Stan picked up his glass.

As he finished his drink and turned to order another, there was a knock on his back. A small man with fair hair and round blue eyes tapped patiently on his spine as if it were a door. Stan inspected him contemptuously.

‘Shouldn't 'a done that, mate,' the little man said. ‘I saw you deliberately kick that kitty and shouldn't 'a done it. Never done you any harm, did it? Nice kitty.' He smiled ingratiatingly into Stan's eyes. ‘You won't do it again, though, will you, mate?…Mate? Will you?' Stan turned his back on him. ‘Aw…' The little man's eyes filled with tears. ‘He won't do it again. He didn't mean it.' But no one was listening. No one cared at all.

Towards evening Stan moved on to the Bricklayers Arms, where he stayed until closing time. By then he had forgotten where he had left the car—forgotten that he owned a car. He caught a taxi home.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Rachel had said goodbye to her aunt and uncle before going to work in the morning.

‘It's not as if you were in a house by yourself,' Pauline Demster had said, unconvinced. ‘There are people all around you. You won't be nervous, will you, dear?'

‘Heavens, no!' Rachel lied, raising her eyebrows in disgust.

‘And Mrs Maitland and Esther would help you if anything went wrong. And you'll be seeing Luigi,' Pauline said. ‘The pantry has enough food in it for six months, I think, so you'll be all right for everything except fruit and vegs and so on. And everything's labelled, so you can't make any mistakes with your cooking…'

‘Yes, I know. Everything will be fine.'

When she came home at night, they had gone, and the flat was quiet and unwelcoming and horribly tidy. Stocks—or were they phlox?—sitting about in vases, looking as if she had interrupted their conversation, and the clock ticking. In the kitchen the refrigerator was throbbing in a subdued, peaceful way; the taps over the sink were hot with captured sunlight.

Rachel tried to make the rooms seem peopled by visiting them all frequently. She tested Pauline's and Robert's chairs and studied the sitting room from these unfamiliar angles. At length, having by a breathless feat of balancing achieved the simultaneous readiness of tray, omelette, toast, coffee and fruit salad, she kicked off her sandals and, putting her feet up on the sofa, prepared to eat her dinner in the fashion of the Ancient Greeks.

All that's missing is the garland of ivy and violets, she thought regretfully. And the wine, and the company. And the slaves, she added, as she trotted back to the kitchen for the salt that she had forgotten.

While she washed the dishes, she played Crosby and Sinatra records on her old gramophone, rushing every three minutes to choose a new song. The tunes compelled her to join in, made her hands move more and more slowly until she ceased altogether to rub the dry cloth on the wet plates. An enveloping, hugging movement was all that could be attempted without loss of art, and with that, the dishes, perforce, were finished. The gramophone was closed up; she got out her books, pen and ink, and began.

She had been working for hours, absorbed, but now, for the last fifteen minutes the thought of Luigi had been hanging between her and the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. She looked at her watch and saw that it was late. It was too bad to read with a divided mind.

Yawning, she closed the history book, the classical atlas and the volume of Thucydides. She stretched lazily, relaxed, and smiled affectionately at them.

‘You were a good man,' she said aloud to Thucydides, as she went over to the bookcase. ‘And wise. The same thing according to Socrates.' She stood for a moment reflecting on her good fortune in finding compatibility with Socrates. But she was tired and it was late and there was work tomorrow. She must go to bed. She wondered very cautiously if everything was locked, knowing that it was, but wondering nevertheless.

The reading lamp over her bed clicked out and she pulled the sheet up to her chin. She would not listen for noises. She would think about the picnic they were going to have on Saturday. They would go in the old car, and take the gramophone, and she would only speak in Italian, yes, really…

She thanked heaven for the streetlight that shone into her room, and thought about her aunt and uncle in Hobart, their bedroom here so uncannily stripped and bare.

Someone moved in the flat overhead and she lay tense, suddenly cold. Then, identifying the sound, she grew limp, and felt foolish and annoyed. Turning and twisting ostentatiously in the bed to show her indifference to the robbers and murderers who might be all around her, at last she fell asleep.

Bright-eyed, olive-skinned people filled her dreams. She was with them on an island that floated on an indigo sea. White marble columns shone against the sky, and there was the sound of flutes in the distance. Salty and fresh, a breeze blew in from the sea, bringing, so it seemed, a feeling of great joy…

CHAPTER NINETEEN

She was out of bed on her feet before she knew what had happened. Eyes enormous, senses quivering, she listened. Yes, there it was again, that frantic tapping on the door that had wakened her. One o'clock, the luminous hands of the clock said. She swallowed nervously and stood, lips parted, muscles rigid.

The paperweight would be something. She jerked herself to life, picked it up, put it down as she struggled into her dressing gown, trying to hurry. Then it was in her hand again, heavy and solid.

The lights came on silently, negotiated as much by nerves and will as by the careful plastic fingers that touched the switches with intuitive pressure.

Heart beating with thick uneven bumps, she crept to the hall. Still the frenzied rapping on the door. A murderer would be quieter—unless he guessed that she would think so and was trying to trap her. Her eyes tested the strength of the Yale lock, and the small brass bolt.