Incarnate (14 page)

“There might be one where I work. That’s MTV.”

“The television station?” The woman looked awed. “Could you put in a word for me?”

“Be better if you got in touch yourself. Say you’ve heard they need a librarian. The person you want is Jake Gould. He’s in charge of staffing.”

“I will. I’ll do it right now.” A large drop of rain emerged from the gray hair at her temple, wandered across to the bridge of her nose, and trickled down to the tip, but she was too intent on Molly to brush it away. “What’s your name, in case I get the job, so I can thank you?”

“Molly. Molly Wolfe.”

The woman frowned, then shook her head. “What’s yours?” Molly said.

The woman hesitated, almost as if she were listening. “Nell.”

“Good luck, Nell,” Molly said and hurried away, glad that Nell wasn’t following. She couldn’t help feeling uneasy about the encounter.

Glassy buds of rain grew on the trees in the park. As she passed the police station where Lenny Bennett had died, she thought of Martin and by the time she reached MTV she was almost running. Ben Eccles came striding toward the lift and looked furious when she didn’t hold it for him. She restrained herself from calling to Martin as soon as she reached the fourth floor. But he wasn’t in his office, and there was nothing to show he had arrived for the day.

Leon’s office was empty too. There was a chance he’d be in editing. She waited patiently for a lift to take her to the seventh floor. Editors pored over moviola screens in the long room: a tiny pope blessed a crowd and trotted backward off the balcony, came back and tried again; a bomb sprouted like a mushroom in a nature film, a mushroom hardly large enough to poison anyone. Martin and Leon were huddled over the screen at the furthest bench. “What’s so interesting?” Molly said, and then she faltered as she saw their faces.

Leon waited until she reached them, and even then his voice was low. “Unless I’m dreaming,” he said, “we’ve been watching the police beat Lenny Bennett to death.”

13

E
VENTUALLY
Mr. Rowley unbuttoned his transparent bluish raincoat and his crumpled jacket and took out his folding glass to examine the album more closely. He’d clucked his tongue appreciatively at the sets from all the Japanese-occupied territories, and now he was looking at individual stamps: the Medieval Postman’s Bell, the Girl Plucking Tea, the Sea-God Palace Gateway, the Rice-Eating Rat of Kanazawa… . He brought his hands together once, applause so polite it was almost inaudible, but all he said to Geoffrey was, “Everything all right?”

“Oh, you know how things are.” As Geoffrey closed the safe belatedly, he glimpsed Hay’s letter. “Many folk worse off than us.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Mr. Rowley was using Geoffrey’s tweezers to turn over the Benefits of Irrigation. “And Mrs. Churchill, is she carrying on the good work?”

“She does her best.”

“And a good best it is.” He frowned, having noticed that Geoffrey was gazing at the tweezers. “Do you mind if I use these?”

“Of course not. Why should I?”

“Well, one doesn’t like to presume.” He was putting Loyalty and Filial Piety back to its chronological place in the album and leaving Geoffrey to his own thoughts. Before she’d gone out this morning, Joyce had wanted to know what he’d done with the tweezers she used to pluck out her white hairs whenever they dared to appear. They had been on the dressing table, under a perfume bottle he had seen at once was tilted. Of course, she was entitled to be a little distracted while the future of the day center was in doubt—hadn’t she been infinitely worse eleven years ago? Nevertheless he was grateful when Mr. Rowley closed the album with a gentle thump and recalled him from his thoughts.

“Splendid,” Mr. Rowley said. “First-rate. Thank you.”

“I thought of you as soon as I saw the auction catalog.”

“I must be on my travels soon, before the weather intervenes. Will you be going to Oxford tomorrow?”

“I certainly am.”

“I hope it proves worth the journey.”

“It will be,” Geoffrey said, thinking of Hay’s letter. He needn’t open it—he already knew Hay’s address in Oxford.

“Well then, Mr. Churchill.” Though they’d known each other for twenty years, they never called each other by their first names, perhaps because they never met outside their offices. “We should discuss a price,” Mr. Rowley said.

They haggled politely for five minutes, saying “Well” before each sum. Mr. Rowley made the final move, and they shook hands briskly. Mr. Rowley was taking out his large pictorial checkbook when the front door slammed downstairs.

“We’re up here, Joyce,” Geoffrey called.

Mr. Rowley completed the check, and then Joyce appeared in the doorway, snowy glitter melting on her shoulders and headscarf. Her face was so eloquent that Mr. Rowley blurted out, “Oh, dear, what’s wrong?”

It reminded Geoffrey of the day she had gone back to nursing. She’d come home far too early, looking very much as she looked now—concussed, that was the word. It had been her first and last day at the hospital, and she had only ever told him one thing. “They said,” she’d told him, whoever they had been, “I should be a patient, not a nurse.”

“My day center has been knocked down. My center that you bought for me, Geoffrey. They’ve left us nowhere to go.”

“Good heavens!” Mr. Rowley cried. “I saw them doing it on my way here. I thought I must have mistaken the street.”

“How can they? How can they get away with it?” Geoffrey said angrily.

“They said the contractor had made a mistake.”

Her face looked as if only her fierceness was preventing it from crumpling. “If you’ll excuse me,” Mr. Rowley said hastily, “I think I should be going before the roads get worse.”

A gust of pure white forced them back into the house from watching him drive away. The snowflakes were growing; they looked as if the Georgian houses were shedding their plaster, a stone autumn. “What will you do now?” Geoffrey said as casually as he could.

“You wait and see. I haven’t even started. Some of my old folk say they’ll picket the planning offices every day until we’re offered somewhere acceptable. I’ll take them to court if I have to, I will.” But her anger was flagging. “My old folk won’t be picketing if the weather stays like this, they’ll be off to the church halls and staying there.”

“At least they’ll be looked after.”

She stared at him as if he were being obtuse. “But I’d lose touch with them.”

“That doesn’t matter, does it? There will always be people who need looking after.”

“But these are
my
old folk, Geoffrey, can’t you understand? They know me. They need
me
.”

He thought of the people at the day center, the one-legged woman and the flabby lady who’d thought he had come to take her home, and had never admired Joyce so much: she wasn’t merely caring for them, she was genuinely fond of them. She’d see it through, he knew she would, and he could help by dealing with Hay, though she must never know. “So what will you do?” he asked again.

“I’ll have somewhere down the hill by Christmas, before my old folk have time to forget me. I will, or I’ll make sure the whole country knows what’s been done to them, and to me.” He had to believe her: if anyone could do it, she could.

They had stew again for dinner. By then the snow had stopped without settling, though there was the threat of another fall in the overcast with its ominous brassy glow. Early Christmas trees sparkled in windows on Muswell Hill, dots of light which, if you squinted, resolved into several colors.

After dinner he went to his office and listened from the door until he was sure that Joyce was reading. He unlocked the safe and left it open while he took Hay’s letter to his desk. He ought to know what Hay had written, hadn’t he, in order to confront him?

His face grew hot as soon as he read the first words. “Dear Joyce Churchill,” the letter began, without even the courtesy of a Madam or a Mrs. “You may recall that I helped run the experiment in which you participated at the Foundation for Applied Psychological Research. I am writing to enquire if you have experienced any aftereffects which you consider to be attributable to the experiment, particularly recently. Please include anything which you feel to be in any way unusual and describe it as fully as possible. It may be important to both of us for me to have this information. I look forward to hearing from you… .” He wouldn’t for much longer, Geoffrey thought with a grim smile, and slipped the letter inside the jacket he would be wearing to Oxford. He locked the safe and went downstairs.

Joyce was asleep. The Agatha Christie had lodged facedown on her instep, glossy cover curling. He sat by her and stroked her face, which looked older when she was asleep, and eventually woke her so that they could go to bed. He felt peaceful as he lay beside her, secure in the knowledge that each of them had something they must do.

He woke to the soft, vague thuds of snow at the window. It was daylight, and he was alone in the room. The faded hands of the luminous clock told him he should have been up an hour ago. At least the snow wasn’t settling, but if he was short of time when he reached Oxford he would simply have to miss the auction. He hurried downstairs. Joyce’s boots were by the front door, and she was in the kitchen. “Why didn’t you wake me?” he said.

“I was going to leave your breakfast in the oven and write you a note.” She hung a tea bag in a cup for him and turned to frown. “I certainly hope you won’t think of driving in this weather.”

“It isn’t as bad as it looks. You’re going out, aren’t you?”

“Are you telling me I have a choice? My old folk can’t be expected to picket in this, though I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them try.” She was gripping the handle of the boiling kettle. “Don’t make me waste time talking. I have to go, but you haven’t. And I won’t be driving.”

“The auction is important too.” He was sure he would have to miss it now. “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I’ll take it slow.”

A nerve was twitching beneath her left eye. “You never drive in this kind of weather.”

“Then it’s about time I learned,” he said desperately. “One day I may have to in an emergency.”

“Won’t you stay at home when you can see how much it means to me?” There seemed all at once to be many more lines on her face. “Do you want me to be tormented all day when I should be looking for somewhere for my old folk? I’m not getting any younger, Geoffrey. I can’t take worry like I used to.” She turned away, her shoulders hunching up then drooping. “I’ve got to go now. If you care at all for my feelings you’ll stay in.”

He heard her stamping to put on her boots. Must he lie to her? He had to go to Oxford to deal with Hay before he wrote another letter that Geoffrey mightn’t intercept. She was opening the front door; he heard the hiss of snow. He would promise not to go and hope that he got home before her. “Oh, Geoffrey, look,” she cried.

He was out of his chair so quickly that his slippers almost tripped him. Joyce was stepping coatless onto the pavement, her hair whitening. He followed her and snow began immediately to trickle into his slippers. The figure Joyce was running to might almost have been some stray Father Christmas; it was wearing the largest duffel coat he had ever seen. “What are you doing all this way from home in this weather?” Joyce cried. “Don’t you know me? It’s Joyce. You come with me, now. Help me, Geoffrey.”

He went reluctantly to them, his slippers cold and soaking. As they guided the old man toward the house he leaned his weight first to one side and then to the other, so that both of them staggered. It was like trying to move a heavy piece of furniture through the snow.

There wasn’t room for either of them to go through the doorway beside the old man; they had to support him from behind. As soon as the snow was shut out, Geoffrey heard a sound like a baby’s first thin squeals. “Lie down,” it said.

“Of course you can.” Joyce guided him toward the stairs. “Come on, Geoffrey. Don’t let me down now.”

It was too sudden. There was an intruder in their home, and he felt he hadn’t been consulted. Joyce mouthed “Geoffrey” furiously at him, but he might have refused to help if he hadn’t seen that she was supporting the man’s entire weight. As she stumbled backward, he went to her aid. Before he could consider what he was doing, they were supporting the old man upstairs. At every step the duffel coat brushed the wall and the banisters, the stairs creaked.

Geoffrey leaned in the guest room doorway and watched Joyce draw the curtains. The old man sat down so heavily that the mattress sagged. He struggled out of his coat and kicked his boots across the room. “That’s right, you get out of those wet things,” Joyce said.

He shook his head to get rid of the duffel hood, and Geoffrey saw that he was bald except for a few strings of gray hair. His scalp looked like old white cheese. Under the coat he was wearing pajamas. He leaned forward groaning and managed by lifting his ponderous legs to grasp the sodden cuffs, which he rolled to the knees up calves that made Geoffrey think of giant pale tubers. When Geoffrey noticed that the wrists and ankles were half the thickness of the arms and legs, he had to turn away. An enormous creak made him look back. The bald man was in the bed, he was a mound that the bedspread barely covered. Only his great slumped face was visible, a mass of pouches hanging from the cheeks, the chin, the closed eyes.

Joyce beckoned Geoffrey out of the room. As they reached the landing the thin voice piped, “Don’t leave me.”

“Someone will be in the house with you, don’t worry,” she called. “I’ll leave the bedroom door open.” She gestured Geoffrey to keep quiet until they were downstairs. “She’s just nervous in a strange place,” she whispered then. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He didn’t know if he found it more distressing that the bald intruder was a woman or that Joyce expected him to stay with her. “You don’t mean to leave her here, do you?”

“Yes, until I come back and can sort things out. What do you want me to do, take her with me on a day like this?”

“But I can’t look after her.” He was rubbing his hands on his dressing gown and couldn’t tell if it was soaked with sweat or snow. “Suppose she falls ill?”