Lonely Hearts (27 page)

“After the war,” she said, “only one thing changed. When they came in the night and hauled you from your beds, they were no longer German.”

“Marian,” Resnick said, “that was forty years ago.”

“When we were born, you and I.”

“Then how can you say you remember?”

For a moment she glanced at the walls. “We know these things, Charles, because they happened to our families, our people.” She smiled at him, indulgently. “Does it have to be with your own ears, your own eyes?”

Resnick looked away from her, down at the coffee, black in the cup. “I think, yes, it does.”

“They should, I think, have christened you Thomas.”

There was nothing he could say. Thomas the apostolic detective: give me the evidence, where’s the evidence? Dead without a body?

Marian spooned sugar into her cup, one, two, shiny silver spoonfuls.

“But your family had already left for this country and you, Charles, you have assimilated to perfection.” She balanced cup and saucer in the palm of one hand, stirring with care. “No longer Mass at the Polish church, communion; no longer the socials and the dances. You speak with no trace of accent, we are waiting only for you to change your name.”

Resnick tasted the coffee, thick like bitter treacle. Somewhere in the house a grandfather clock chimed, several seconds later another, and another.

“You’re not selling up, moving?”

“How could I ever?”

“You said you were expecting someone, something to do with an auction.”

“Oh, one or two pieces, nothing special; but the rooms upstairs, they are so rarely used. People used to come and stay, many people, and now…This is a large house to keep, there are many bills and I am alone.” She looked at him sharply. “You know what this is like.”

Resnick nodded. “The reason I came…”

“I know.”

He sat further back in the chair and waited.

“As I have said, the newspaper I will not read myself, but a friend, she told me, you are asking questions of those like me who are—the expression—lonely of heart.”

“I saw your name, on a list…”

“A list?” she said, a hint of alarm.

“We have been checking everyone who has placed advertisements, responded; checking and cross-checking…I didn’t want to send a stranger to see you.”

“You are kind.”

“I was surprised…”

“That I would do this?”

“That you would look outside the community.”

Her face broke into a gentle smile and he realized, not for the first time, that she could be beautiful. “Oh, Charles, you understand how well-known I am. For me to approach somebody else, a man, a man who is…” She regarded him for a moment, pointedly. “…unattached, this is so difficult. I am too well-known here among people whose ways are not perhaps the ways of this world. Oh, there are men who have said things to me behind their hands when their wives are out of the room, propositions, Charles, but not proposals.”

She set down her cup and sat perfectly still. Resnick continued to watch, wait.

“It was a little over a year ago, I was feeling, perhaps you will recognize this, so alone I could no longer believe the sound of my own breath as it left my body. For three whole weeks I shut myself in the house; I went through piles of old letters, read diaries I had kept ever since I was a child in my country. I stared into the faces of old photographs until they almost became my own. For the last five days I did not eat, I drank nothing but water. If the telephone rang, I did not hear it.”

She reached out for his hand and he took her fingers between his own. How could she be so cold?

“One morning in the bedroom I saw a face in the glass and it frightened me. I had seen it before, faces like it after the flesh has fallen away and only the eyes seem alive, the way they are staring. You know where I have seen such faces.”

After a little time she withdrew her hand, straightened her back. “You would like more coffee?”

“Please.”

When it was poured, she continued. “The advertisement I sent, it was discreet without telling a lie. I told the truth about my age, about the kind of friend I am seeking—educated, a gentleman, ‘with fine tastes and intellectual pursuits,’ I said this.” She sighed. “Even so, of the few replies I received, you would not believe…perhaps now you would. But there was one, the only one worthy of reply; a professor at the university, Doria.” Smiling, she angled her head towards the light from the window. “A renaissance man. Truly, that is what he is.”

“So you met him?”

“Yes, but not immediately. You have to understand, I was now uncertain of what I was doing. Did I want to meet this man, no matter how charming his letters, how erudite? I felt vulnerable and I am not used to this. So for a time there was a correspondence, nothing more.”

“And he was satisfied with this?”

“Perfectly.”

“Yet you did meet him?”

“He was a clever man, he knew by now my interests. I have, he wrote, a pair of excellent tickets for the Polish National Symphony Orchestra, here in the city. Chopin, naturally. Eisner, Lutoslawski. Everyone I know is there. It is wonderful, all wonderful. Flowers are thrown on to the stage. The audience is on its feet, cheering. There are three encores. Doria—he is charming, he has brought for me a small corsage. He smiles at my friends and shakes their hands, stands a little behind me and to the side. When we walk back to our seats after the interval, he takes, for a moment, my arm. After the concert we go for supper, a few glasses of wine.” She laughed, remembering. “Vodka!”

“A success, then?”

“Ah, that depends.”

“You had found your man with fine tastes.”

“Oh, yes.”

Marian stood up and moved across the room in the direction of the piano.

“You saw him again?” Resnick asked.

“The next day, the day after that,” Marian replied, “the telephone it was ringing constantly. All the friends who had forgotten me when I had been so lonely. What a wonderful man, such a charmer, who is he, where did you meet him, you lucky woman, what a catch!” She folded her arms across her chest, switched them behind her back, fingers linked.

“The catch was this—amongst all those telephone calls, there was not one from him. Nor was there a letter. Only, the next morning there had been a card, thanking me for being such a good companion and suggesting that perhaps we might go together again, one suitable evening, to a concert.” She paused. “Evidently, no such evening has proved suitable.”

After a while Resnick asked, “You’ve had no further contact with him?”

Marian shook her head.

“And you’ve made no attempt to contact him?”

“Of course not,” she said sharply.

“Nor would you?”

“No.”

“But if he had called, you would have seen him again?”

“Yes, I think so. After all, wasn’t he, as you say, what I had been looking for?”

“Really?” Resnick asked, shifted forward in the chair.

“What do you mean?”

“All the charm, the knowledge, you thought it was real?”

“As far as I knew.”

“Sincere?”

“Certainly.”

“And yet he never wrote or phoned? Doesn’t that call all that sincerity into question?”

“Charles, he was honest with me, this man. I think so. He did not make a secret of the fact that this was the way he met women, a number of women. He liked, he said, the excitement of meeting someone for the first time, getting to know them in that way. He was not looking for something more permanent than that suggests.”

Resnick stood up. “I’m grateful, Marian. For what you’ve told me as well as the coffee.”

“You are not suspicious of him…these awful crimes?”

“I don’t think so.”

He took his overcoat from her in the hall; wound his scarf about his neck. “Did you find him attractive?”

Something seemed to pass across her face, across her mind.

“Oh, Charles, be sure of this, he is an attractive man. To women, I think so.”

“He’s good-looking?”

“He listens; he makes you think that you are important. That you matter.”

Resnick hesitated: he wanted to ask Marian if anything had taken place between them, anything sexual. She stood there, like a governess, watching him as he put on his gloves. He couldn’t ask her.

“Charles,” she said when he was out on the step, “at the end of the evening he took my hand, he kissed it, so quick I barely felt it. That was all.”

Resnick nodded, wondering if he were really blushing. “Goodbye, Marian.”

“Next time,” she said after him, “come only for the coffee.”

At the gate he raised a hand and walked quickly from sight, leaving her standing there, alongside the flag.

Twenty-Six

Rachel gulped at her tea, swore when the toast splintered apart as soon as she pressed the butter knife against it. On the shelf behind, Radio Four was moving from the weather forecast to the news headlines via a trailer for that afternoon’s play. Through the voices she could just hear
Morning Concert
on Radio Three coming to an end in the bathroom. Files, diary, letters to be posted. She swept the pieces of toast from the table into her hand and deposited them in the plastic bin.

“Why don’t you hang on? I’ll give you a lift.”

“Thanks, Carole, but I can’t. I promised I’d look in on the Sheppard kids first thing.”

“No problem, is there?”

“I don’t think so. But if I show my face, Grannie can have a moan at me instead of taking it out on the home-help.”

“You’ll be in tonight?”

“Not sure. But I’ll see you in the office later.”

“I’ve got a case conference all afternoon.”

“Carole, if I miss you I’ll phone.”

“Just want to make sure I don’t make too much lasagna.”

“Bye!”

There was a slam as Rachel closed the door. Her car was parked thirty yards along the road and she was about to climb into it as Chris Phillips got out of his.

Rachel thumped her bag down against the roof of the car and glared.

“Well,” Chris said, “when else do I get a chance to see you?”

“I thought that was the point.”

“Jesus! How long were we living together? One week we’re talking about moving out of the city and buying a new place together…”

“You were talking.”

“…and the next…”

“
You
were talking.”

“All right, I was talking about getting somewhere else, and the next we’re not talking at all.”

“We talked the other night when you came round uninvited, have you forgotten that? We didn’t only talk, we got to walk the dog round the block.”

“How can…? You used to love that dog.”

“I still do.”

“You used to say you loved me.”

“What do you want, Chris? I’m already late.”

“Oh, God!”

Rachel opened the car door and threw her bag across on to the passenger seat.

“I thought, well, I haven’t seen you for a bit, I thought we could go out for a meal.”

“We don’t go out for meals.”

“It looks as if we don’t do anything.”

She nodded. “That’s right.”

“Rachel,” he said, standing close against the car. “You said this was a temporary thing, while you thought things through, sorted yourself out.”

“And if I’d wanted to sort them out with you, Chris, I would have done it while we were still together.”

“Come and talk to me, for Christ’s sake!”

“I can’t talk to you.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“Is it?”

“Absolute bloody nonsense!”

Rachel looked at him, her fingers round the door handle.

“You know you can talk to me. You can talk to anybody. It’s not something you have problems with.”

“All right, then. I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Wonderful!”

“I don’t want to talk to you, Chris, and that’s why. That’s a great example of why. Because whenever I say anything that goes against what you want to hear, you don’t like it.”

“Do you? Does anyone?”

“There’s a difference between disagreeing and refusing to hear what somebody’s saying.”

“I can hear you all right.”

“Yes, but you don’t acknowledge it.”

“Oh, fine!”

“You don’t accept it and move on. How on earth you manage at work I can’t imagine. Not if that’s the way you act.”

“My work’s perfectly okay, thanks very much. The difference is that I know when I’m there and when I’m not, I can tell where one starts and the other finishes.”

“Meaning that I can’t?”

“Meaning that if I react to you the way I do, it’s because my emotions are involved.”

“And they’re not at work, not with your clients?”

“No! Not in the same way, for Christ’s sake!” Rachel looked at her watch. She pulled the door open wider, got in and closed it firmly behind her. She turned the key in the ignition, gave it some more choke, tried again and put the engine into gear.

“You won’t change your mind?” Chris said, bending towards the window.

Rachel indicated that she was pulling out from the curb.

“Something quick to eat…”

He stood in the middle of the road, watching her car get smaller until it turned right into the main stream of traffic.

“How’s Debbie?” Lynn Kellogg asked.

“Fine,” said Naylor, a little too hastily.

“She’s been seeing the doctor?”

“Honestly, she’s okay. She wasn’t even sick this morning. That is, not really sick. Just…”

Resnick had half a pastrami and mustard on dark rye and a quarter of potato, onion, and chive salad. What he didn’t have was a fork. Lunching on his own he wouldn’t have thought twice about using his fingers, but in front of his subordinates he had to set an example. He’d save the salad for later.

He bit into the sandwich and lifted up a brown A4 envelope with forefinger and thumb of his other hand, shaking it gently until three copies of a photograph slid down on to the desk.

“William James Doria, academic of this parish.”

Lynn Kellogg’s already red cheeks deepened a tone. So he had taken her seriously. Well, good for him.

“I don’t know if this is going to be any more than an irrelevant little side-show,” Resnick was saying. “But I’ve had a word with the superintendent and he says we can take it a little way, see if anything shows. If we haven’t got anything after, say, three days at the most, we’ll chuck him back on the pile with the other also-rans and join the main party. Right?”