Fearful Symmetry (18 page)

CHAPTER
22

S
ARA HAD SAID
that he may, meaning it. But Andrew did not contact her the next day, nor the one after, nor the one after that, sensing that if he were to telephone her he would want to see her and that if he saw her, nothing would ever be the same again. Perhaps if he had been able to think of his relationship with Sara as just an affair he would have found himself able to embark upon it, but it could never be just that. As his love for Sara had taken definite shape in his mind as the great life-changing force that he wanted it to be, and not a jokey little bit of adultery of the kind that he had watched so many of his colleagues amuse themselves with, the greater also had grown his sense of his huge, undeniable responsibilities to his children.

He had telephoned on the fourth day, unable not to, apologetic, eager and ultimately unavailing.

‘Sara, I was stuck at home all weekend. Of course I wanted to ring, I simply couldn’t. I’m at work now. I thought of you the whole time, Sara. When can I see you? Sara? Sara, please.’

‘It’s Tuesday. Why didn’t you ring yesterday?’

‘Sara, please. Be reasonable. I had to go Adele’s inquest. It was opened and adjourned. I’m afraid Jim’s in for a hard time.’

‘
Reasonable
?’ She was not going to be drawn away from what she wanted to say. ‘All right, I’ll be reasonable. Reasonable is seeing how stupid it is to get involved with a married man. Reasonable is seeing that I’d always be waiting for you to have time to sneak out here, and you’d be so guilty and thinking about your wife all the time. Not to mention the children.
That’s
reasonable, Andrew, not going along with this.’

‘Sara, don’t put us through this. We need to talk.’

‘No, we don’t. We need to not see each other, however much we want to. And I do want to. That’s the trouble.’

‘Sara—’

‘No visits, no lessons. I can’t see you without wanting you, so I won’t see you anymore. I’m not being moral, I’m protecting myself. I won’t be a
mistress
.’

He saw her, briefly and painfully, at Adele’s funeral on 6 October. In the company of fellow mourners they had both looked quite wretched, perhaps even enough to raise in others some surprise at how the most unlikely people could be so affected by funerals.

That had been nearly three weeks ago. It was now 26 October and more than his relationship with Sara had frozen into a depressed immobility. Enquiries had been continuing among the known acquaintances of Brendan Twigg, a straggle of defiant underdogs that stretched halfway round Somerset and Wiltshire. Two or three whom they had brought in for questioning had not come up with the expected histrionic denials that they had clapped eyes on him for several weeks. That would have been a clear indication that he was, in police parlance, in the vicinity, staying with people for a night or two and rallying their support, under the anti-police banner that they all shared, in keeping a low profile. Instead they were getting vague murmurings that they had not noticed Brendan around much recently, which meant that they probably genuinely hadn’t.

It was a great pity, Andrew thought, that something of the same torpor could not infect the opera project. The new momentum in
Nash!
(or
Beau!
—they had yet to decide) and in his own wife, by contrast, only added to his embarrassment in being associated with the whole thing. He still thought of it as fundamentally misguided but it now seemed to him, following Adele’s death, also literally sad.

In the days before and immediately following the funeral, Helene had, to his surprise, turned to Valerie for nurture and sympathy, causing him to wonder briefly if there were qualities in his wife that he could not see. She had taken rather naturally to the role of comforter and, oddly enough, at around the same time, had found herself in demand in a similar role when an old friend, Linda, who had been Valerie’s bridesmaid, had rung her up out of the blue, having been only in Christmas card touch for years. Linda was going through the most awful divorce, and was turning to Valerie. Andrew had never been able to stand her and had been given to understand that Valerie couldn’t either.

‘I thought you couldn’t stand her. And why does she want
you
with her, after all this time?’

‘Linda was my bridesmaid. We go way back. It’s not hard to understand. Most of their friends now are
his
friends. She wants somebody familiar, someone who’s
her
friend. It’s natural.’ It was a sign of Valerie’s new generosity with her time, as well as her surge in energy, that she had already allowed herself to be summoned away several times to Linda’s house in Swindon, as fort-holder-in-chief. That Linda needed her she obviously took as a compliment, and was glowing in its warmth.

Then, nearly a week ago, coming round the Circus straight from work towards Helene’s for the rehearsal, Andrew had heard the familiar sound of Helene’s voice in a mounting arpeggio (ah—ah—ah—aagh!) followed by a scratchy imitation (er—er—ergh?—
ergh
?). So Valerie’s condolence visits to Helene had become singing lessons. When Helene had answered the door she was practically trilling her little surprise. Dear Valerie was having proper lessons so that she could acquit herself in the new role of Juliana Papjoy, and Helene was thrilled to be giving them because that was what it was all about, wasn’t it, giving?

Valerie had been wearing one of his shirts with black leggings, a pen behind her ear and the facial expression of one upon whom everything depends. She had graciously assumed not only Adele’s leading, although rewritten, part, but also the mantle of the one who was almost single-handedly saving the show, and as the rehearsal had got under way Andrew had observed that with her new confidence there was a new energy which drew people’s eyes to her, including his. He noticed that she was opening her mouth wider and not just to sing, and showing her bottom teeth when she laughed, which was more often. And he had not noticed before that she was fixing her hair so as to make it bigger, or perhaps it was just that she was tending to throw it back with a slight shake of the head, which drew attention to it. He was pretty sure it had been done over with something to make it a bit redder. He liked the effect. In the moments when Cosmo was rehearsing others she had sat out with her legs studiously splayed or bent, ever poised, like a resting but eternally body-conscious aerobics teacher. She had spoken quite seriously to him over the coffee about the responsibility she felt for keeping Helene’s spirits up, along with her sense of empowerment in finding her own voice and feeling that she had things to give as a performer. Helene had beamed her gratitude and spoken of Valerie as our saviour and Valerie had fussed reciprocally round Helene, substituting admirably for the still absent Jim.

Poppy had seemed a little left out. Perhaps she had been hoping to be appointed to the role of chief comforter herself, so Andrew had whispered something diplomatic about Helene perhaps needing the company of a woman who was also a mother and nearer her own age. He had felt sorry for Poppy, who continued to display a sort of dogged backstage stamina that got all the dull and thankless things done and for which they should all have been much more grateful than they were. While Cosmo sat at the piano every day like a chugging engine it was Poppy who was keeping him stoked from the library with biographical details, quotations and songs about Beau Nash, which she referred to as ‘material’. Andrew had run into her once outside the Podium, laden with bags. ‘Material for Cosmo,’ she had said importantly, ‘some more
fascinating
insights.’ And off she had gone to fuel the refining fire of Cosmo’s creativity with more votive offerings of photocopies and books with the relevant pages turned down at the corners.

Helene had also confided to Valerie, who passed it on to Andrew, that Cosmo was really getting on with the music now. He had commandeered Helene’s drawing room and insisted on at least five uninterrupted hours every day. One evening, when Helene had ventured the observation that Cosmo had a very quiet way of working, she had been aware that the remark created a slight frost. But notes from the piano were interspersed by long silences during which, Helene had said to Valerie, she liked to imagine Cosmo brooding at the piano or scratching on manuscript paper with a scowl like dear Beethoven’s. He had grown more confident and, to everyone’s relief, seemed to have clearer ideas about where the ‘piece’ was heading. And to give him his due, the music had not been too bad. What he had given them to sing were very nearly tunes; that was to say that after hearing one line, you would feel you knew where the second should go and then it didn’t, but you got the knack eventually.

Only Phil, obviously trying diligently in his industrious way, had seemed nevertheless exhausted and disinclined to sing at all, unknowingly reflecting Andrew’s own feelings. Andrew supposed he was having a busy time with his course. He was doing engineering or maths, but he had never spoken of it except to say that it was fine. Perhaps he didn’t have enough English to chat easily. Or perhaps it was just clumsy Western thinking to mistake his intense quiet for unhappiness but, being anyway of slight build, Phil now looked smaller, as if the new reticence in him amounted almost to shrinkage.

Thinking all this at lunchtime in the canteen, looking out at Manvers Street and a concrete, East German– looking branch of Comet, and feeling as a result quite stupefyingly depressed, Andrew began to wonder if he could find an excuse to skip tomorrow’s rehearsal. Last week he had understood from Poppy that big efforts were going to be made to persuade Jim to come back. We’ve all got to get Jim to
move on,
she had said, blinking when Andrew had said that yes, policemen ask people to move on the whole time. Quite apart from looming dread at having to play the joyless cello part again, he would much rather not run into Jim, less out of embarrassment than regret that he could tell him nothing about Adele’s death that would be of any use or comfort to him. Andrew had made it his business not to know the detail of the case that was being built by the CPS and would have to say, were Jim to be present tomorrow and ask him, that indeed employment legislation can take a small business horribly by surprise. Jim’s ad hoc workshop, only the spare room at the back was probably how Jim thought of it, was indeed a workplace and Adele, however informal the arrangement, had been his employee. It made no difference that nobody blamed him for what had happened if he could be found to have been negligent or even malicious in failing to provide a safe workplace.

Deliverance from the rehearsal came in the unexpected form of DS Bridger sloping in and standing over the table just as Andrew was finishing his sandwich.

‘Sorry, sir, but Judge Ward-Pargiter is here, with his daughter,’ he said, as respectfully as if the judge were standing gowned and bewigged behind him. ‘He’s asking to see you.’

A
LTHOUGH
A
NNA
’
S
face this time had the sleek, almost feline look of someone who is being both well and regularly fed and is always warm enough, she seemed cowed. The eyes behind the glasses were red and swollen again. ‘Does the silly baggage ever stop crying?’ was not Andrew’s first question, at any rate not out loud.

‘Well, Anna, have you got something you’d like to tell us?’

Adam Ward-Pargiter nodded towards his daughter. He looked weary and ashamed. ‘Get on with it, Anna,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she blubbed.

Her father turned round to her. ‘Anna, you know damn well it’s a bit late for sorry. Nobody’s that interested in hearing how sorry you are. Just get on with what Chief Inspector Poole needs to know.’

Anna gulped. ‘I helped Bren. I gave him some money.’

‘I found her building society book this morning. She gave him four hundred pounds. Practically all she had,’ her father said, turning on Andrew a face that looked as if he had been kicked. ‘Although it’s not the money in itself that’s at issue. It’s hers, after all.’

‘When did you do this, Anna?’ Andrew asked.

‘Over a fortnight ago. The date’s in the book.’ Anna fished the account book from a pocket and pushed it across the table. ‘I took the money out on a Saturday, the tenth. Bren—he ran into me after school one day, you see.’

‘
Ran into
you? Not quite accurate,’ Adam Ward-Pargiter said stiffly. ‘Don’t make it sound like an accident. He’s not stupid. He’s vicious, and a manipulator and a coward, but not stupid. After all, he didn’t risk showing his face anywhere near the school, or anywhere you’d be seen together. Did he, Anna?’

Andrew said, ‘Anna, let’s have the whole story. Will you please tell me in your own words exactly what happened.’

Anna nodded miserably and wiped her nose. She had come with her own supply of tissues this time, Andrew noted.

‘On Wednesday the seventh I got the school bus home as usual. I’m the only one who gets off in Atworth. It’s about two miles home from there so I come in on my bike and leave it at the garden centre, locked up next to the sheds at the back. When I went round the sheds to get my bike that day I found Fonz tied up there. Tied to my bike.’ The tears started again and her father gave an exasperated sigh. Anna lifted her head. ‘The dog. Bren’s dog. He looked terrible. He was trembling all over and he had big scabs on him and he was even thinner than before. He was pleased to see me, though.’

‘Just the dog? No sign of Bren?’

‘Not straight away. I was so upset. Because of the state Fonz was in. I’d just got him untied because I thought I should take him straight down to the vet in Box, and Bren appeared. He said he had to wait to make sure I was on my own. I was nearly crying about the dog and I started going on about how could he let him get like that. And Bren said it was all right for me walking straight back into my cushy big house and poncy posh school and all that. He’d been watching me come and go for weeks, he said. If I really cared about deprivation and hunger and all those things I wouldn’t be part of the . . . you know, effing middle class that created all the poverty in the first place. He was too poor to feed the dog, he said.’