Meeting the English (21 page)

‘Could he do Morse Code?' said Juliet.

‘Don't be daft,' said Struan.

‘No, honestly, Struan, listen,' said Juliet, ‘if we could teach him Morse Code, we could get him to say you were innocent! Dad's in the study all the time! He must have seen who took the money. I bet it was Mr Riley! Unless it was you. Was it you, Struan? I don't care even if it was, but was it you?'

‘No,' said Struan, chewing. ‘Was it you?'

‘No,' said Juliet, ‘but I might have taken it if I'd known it was there. The cash, I mean, I've never done cheque fraud but I might have had a go, it is my trust after all. Did you know the chequebook was there?'

‘No,' said Struan, cheese strings hanging from his teeth, ‘and I wouldn't take it anyway.'

‘The cheques, then?' persisted Juliet. ‘That's my money really, but if you sent it to your gran or something, you can tell me, I don't mind.'

‘Uh uh,' said Struan. ‘Wasnae me.'

‘Why not?' said Juliet. ‘I mean really, Struan, why not? I mean, I'm not sure that's even sensible. We owe you, don't we? We don't pay you nearly enough. Is it just because you're from Cuik?'

‘Aye,' said Struan, ‘probably.'

‘And I failed my GCSEs,' said Juliet, ‘I don't seem to care very much, but maybe that's the pills. But I'm not going back to Finchley Road. I'm going to stay here, I thought I might get a job. Please, Struan, you stay too.'

‘Don't be daft,' said Struan. ‘How can I? Your mum just fired me.'

‘She didn't really,' said Juliet. ‘She didn't even hire you. That was Shirin. So Mum can't fire you. She can't do anything to you really, she just acts like she can.'

‘Acting? Saying she's going to the police?' said Struan, and Juliet thought that even though Struan had been looking a lot better later, with his tan and everything, he didn't now. He had gone sort of yellow and his mouth made a mean line. He looked old. She ploughed on.

‘You see, you're not used to my mum, Struan. She's a bit, you know, theatrical. I mean, she gets ideas. She gets on her high horse and sometimes she's completely wrong, and the thing to do is not to expect her to take it back, you just have to work round her. Like about going to the convent. I mean, I just won't go, and in a month or two she'll forget she even said it. She won't go to the police, because she'd have to tell them about taking money from the trust for Mr Riley, which would be really embarrassing. She was just making a noise. If you just stayed on, it would probably be OK, she probably would just never mention it again.'

‘Juliet,' said Struan, ‘I'm not theatrical, OK?'

‘No,' said Juliet, sticking her hair in her mouth and starting to chew it, ‘I can see that.'

‘Look,' said Struan, ‘you're my pal. My wee pal, you know that. But your brother hit me. Your mother called me a thief. She said I stole the car, and I stole some cash and I stole a chequebook, and that's no a joke, cos I didnae, OK?'

‘Sorry,' said Juliet, and she put her head in her hands and actually shut up for a bit.

‘I'm sorry about Jake too,' she said, after a bit. ‘Did you really meet him in the house?'

‘Uh huh,' said Struan.

‘You should have said,' said Juliet. ‘It's weird of you not to.'

‘Aye,' said Struan, ‘that's probably true.'

‘I don't think it was Jake, though,' said Juliet, ‘took the money. I mean, I haven't seen him at all. I think it was Mr Riley. Classic move, taking the cash, blaming you.'

‘Mr Riley's no a cocaine addict,' said Struan.

‘Point,' said Juliet, ‘on the other hand, we don't know, do we? Maybe he's got two wives or something, and they keep demanding fur coats, and a son who looks like you who is really good at forging signatures.'

‘Juliet,' said Struan, coldly, subsiding onto his pillow, ‘this is real fucking life.'

‘Sorry,' said Juliet. ‘And I'm sorry about, you know, Ron. It must be a bit weird for you. I only snogged him though, honestly. I mean, so far, I've only snogged him, and frotted a bit, but I am going to see him again probably.'

‘It's none of my business,' said Struan, from the pillow. Exhaustion swooped round him like jet planes.

‘Look,' said Juliet, ‘one thing. Wait for Shirin, OK? She's out at a gallery, selling something, she told me yesterday. But when she gets back, she'll sort this out. She hired you, not Mum. She knows we need you.'

‘Oh aye,' said Struan, ‘I'm well aware of that. I'm very useful, I am. I'm a fucking genius bum-wiper.'

‘Well you are,' said Juliet, ‘you really are.'

‘Thanks for the sandwich,' said Struan Robertson, and he put the empty mug on the plate, and the plate on the tray. He handed the tray to Juliet, and curled his long legs back into the bed. He gazed upwards at the Velux, nailed cleverly together by none other than Mr Riley, and the yellow sky above it. ‘I'm going to have a sleep now, OK?'

‘Struan,' said Juliet from the door, ‘you know my exams? Do you think I'm stupid?'

Struan opened one eye. ‘No,' he said, ‘I think the only stupid thing you do is not think enough of yourself. Now go away.' And she went.

20

Juliet Prys agreed that she was clever, really. Juliet agreed that she did not think enough of herself. Juliet took a pill and a yoghurt, and decided to sort out the entire recent calamity.

First, she went into Shirin's room, knocking superstitiously on the door first. She lifted Shirin's dressing gown from the end of the bed. She picked up one of Shirin's snakeskin belts, coiled on the dressing table, and tried it on her own middle, on the loosest hole. She got out the card Ron Fox had given her, and pulled the phone off Shirin's dressing table. She looked at herself in Shirin's mirror: a small slim girl in a brown jacket, about to call her boyfriend, Ron, on the phone. She got the answering machine, but it was good to know the number was real, even if she couldn't help remembering his short bouncy walk, and the littleness of his feet in his loafers.

On the dressing table was Shirin's house address book. Juliet started work. Under ‘E', she found ‘Emergency nurses, turn up on spec, cost £££s,' and called them, and engaged someone to call round and clean and change Mr Prys asap, the bill to be sent to Mrs M. Prys in the Finchley Road. Then she called Shirin's gallery (under G) and got a posh girl and said, ‘I'm sorry to interrupt, but there's a domestic emergency'; got Shirin, explained the whole thing, maybe a bit fast, and Shirin said for heaven's sake, and not to let Struan leave, and to give her a couple of hours.

Juliet wriggled round on the bed till she could see herself in the mirror again, firm and competent with a phone, and then she called Celia's house and let her mother rabbit on about how Celia was still missing. ‘You should call the police,' said the new Juliet, and Celia's mum breathed in sharply, and said, really, did she think so? Juliet said yes, to be honest I've hardly seen her for weeks, she has a much older lover don't you know? And after Celia's mum had dashed off in a panic, she made a winsome face at herself in the mirror and pulled at a bit of her fringe and some of it came out. She thought, honestly, she should stop the pills, and then the nurse rang at the door downstairs, and Juliet let her in and then went into the front room, and put on her Jane Fonda while the nappy stuff happened, she had to do something with the twitchiness.

*   *   *

Struan had been had dropped from a great height onto a moor of Scottish heather. He was flat out and it was a great relief to be alive, but all his limbs were paralysed. Golden eagles whirled overhead, with intent.

‘Struan,' said Shirin's voice from hundreds of feet below him, and he tried to raise his head, but the blow was too recent, and the bonds of the parachute too tight. A fold of silk touched his cheek—

‘Struan,' said Shirin again, and Struan yelled and sat bolt upright, clutching the blanket to his chest. She was actually sitting, tiny and composed, wearing a pair of white shorts and tightly belted blouse, on the end of his bed. ‘Heavens,' said Shirin, ‘sorry to startle you.' Struan's tongue was thick as a sausage.

‘It's OK,' he muttered.

‘Struan,' said Shirin, ‘Juliet explained. But you mustn't think of leaving. It is me who employs you, Struan, and I do not wish to dismiss you. I have said so to Myfanwy.'

‘How no?' said Struan. He looked at Shirin's lovely dark head, neat as a bird's, and remembered it in Jake Prys' hand. Close to, you could see the olive pores of her golden legs. She smelled of new pencils, and she was talking on about Myfanwy, how it was all bluster and theatre and nonsense, at the bottom of it, a business venture of hers gone sour, and slackness on Giles' part, hardly Struan's responsibility, and Struan ran his tongue round his dry mouth, and said nothing, even when she stopped, and stared straight at him, and smiled, carefully.

‘I said to Myfanwy,' she said, ‘that there was a mistake. I said I'd cashed some cheques and used the cash to buy some necessities for the house, just as she did.'

‘You took the money?' said Struan. ‘The cheques and the cash?'

‘I said so,' said Shirin, with a small laugh. ‘She does not believe me of course, but she cannot say so. Really, this is none of her business in the first place. She does not employ you. And for the cheques, she is in a bad problem herself, she has used that account for too many things to argue with me.'

‘You mean you didn't take the money?' said Struan.

Shirin sighed. She pushed herself back, wrapped her knees in her arms. Her feet were bare on his sheet. She said, ‘Struan, we all take things.'

‘No,' said Struan, ‘not me. I dinnae.'

‘Me, I do,' said Shirin. She curled round in the bed, leaning on the bulk of Struan's blanketed knees. He held them stiff as he could.

‘What did you take?' he asked.

‘My grandmother's jewels, for example,' said Shirin.

‘Aye, no, she'd have wanted you to have them,' said Struan.

‘Not at all,' said Shirin – ‘no, not in the least. My grandmother's jewels – you are imagining a brooch, something like that, Struan?' Struan was imagining his gran's good pin, actually, on her tweed coat, at the funeral.

‘I am talking about a cache,' said Shirin, her head propped on her hand, ‘it was the collection of my great-grandmother. Several quite good pieces, actually. French-made, mostly, two Russian, all pre-war. Just one big necklace – the rest, small pieces. Perfect, you see. This is a path out of the country.'

‘Bribes?' said Struan, thickly.

‘Exactly. They are perfect – we give one piece here, one piece there.'

‘Was it your dad's mum, your gran?' asked Struan.

‘My mother's mother,' said Shirin. ‘My father was in England already. That was the problem. We used all our money, our families' money, to effect this. Now me, and my two sisters, my mother, we were still in Tehran. We needed to leave.'

‘Would she no help you, your gran?' asked Struan, interested despite himself.

‘No,' said Shirin. ‘No. She told us she had nothing, it was all gone, spent. She wanted everything for her son, you see. My uncle. My mother's brother.'

‘That's always the way,' said Struan. ‘Sons.'

‘The youngest son, too,' said Shirin. ‘He was no good, but of course, my grandmother did not see that. I knew her hiding place, from when I was a child – under her bed, the floorboard lifted. A perfect little vault. And so there we were, in Tehran, waiting and waiting, and then one night, we went one night for dinner there, at grandmother's, and I excused myself, and found the vault and I put the jewels under my long coat. And then we left. I took my mother and my sisters, I said now is the time, and we went straight from my grandmother's house to Paris. Then here.'

‘Were you the oldest sister?' asked Struan.

‘I am the middle one,' said Shirin. ‘The oldest one is good, the younger one is dead, the youngest of all is a child. So I am the one who says what to do.'

‘And – what happened to your gran?' asked Struan. ‘In the end?'

‘She died,' said Shirin, meeting his eye, and nodding, ‘soon after that. Her son, you see, the one she loved? He went to prison.'

‘Did you hate her?' breathed Struan.

‘No,' said Shirin, ‘I loved her. But we were four who were young and she was one who was old. And she lied to me too, about the jewels.' Struan looked at the gold chain lapping Shirin's neck, and then into his mind came Jake Prys' arms, with a bracelet on the wrist, and the cuffs of his shirt tucked up. And he thought what Shirin was saying, telling this story, and he thought about Myfanwy, in the kitchen, and said, coldly:

‘I still didn't take the money, if that's what you mean.' Shirin stood up. She was very angry, Struan could tell.

‘Very well,' she said, ‘you play it that way. You didn't take the money. I'm happy with that. We are talking about a few hundred pounds to which in my view you are entitled, or which you could work off if you prefer. But not if you didn't take it.'

‘I'm no staying here,' said Struan, ‘I'm getting the bus.'

‘Oh please,' said Shirin, ‘please. Don't be a prig.'

‘Come on,' said Struan, ‘can we not have the truth?'

‘What truth,' said Shirin, ‘do you have in mind?'

‘He took it,' said Struan, ‘I keep saying it but you're the only one who knows it's true. I didnae take the money. Your man took it. Jake Prys.' Shirin grasped the door handle and grimaced. She turned slowly to Struan on the bed.

‘Of course,' she said, ‘yes, yes I'm sure he did! Jake! That must be the answer,' and she laughed, so prettily, her jaw wide as a cat's, and went out and shut the door.