Tarnished (11 page)

‘If you want to lose a stone or two, just cut out the bread and pasta,’ she said helpfully to Peg.

‘So what do
you
do?’ Peg asked Raymond, in an attempt to divert the beam of attention away from herself.

‘Same what I started back home,’ Raymond said, sawing into his steak, which, as he put it, was so rare it was almost mooing.

‘Nightclubs?’

‘Yep,’ Raymond said, chewing. ‘And bars.’

‘He owns a chain of establishments all along the Costas,’ Caroline said.

‘Thatcher’s, I call ’em,’ he said, reaching for a toothpick. ‘After Maggie. After you in a way.’ He laughed, a deep booze-and-tobacco-stained chuckle, then dug into his gums and extracted a lump of chewed meat, which he sucked off the end of the toothpick. ‘Bit gristly this steak, Kitten.’

‘I’ll have a word with Manuela,’ Caroline said.

‘Nan would love to know about all that,’ Peg said.

It was as if her words were a large stone she had dropped in the middle of the dining table.

‘All you’ve achieved,’ she went on into the silence. ‘She’d be ever so proud.’

‘Not in front of the boy, Margaret,’ Raymond said, inclining his head towards his precious son.

‘Who’s Nan?’ Paulie asked.

‘Our dad’s mum,’ Peg said.

‘Enough,’ Raymond said, his voice low. ‘He doesn’t need to know.’

‘But why not?’ Peg went on, determined not to be put off now she was clearing the way for her speech. ‘They were ever so kind to me – Nan and Jean and Gramps, I mean.’

The air in the room seemed to tighten. Caroline let out one of her stupid, silvery laughs.

Raymond silently attacked the bloody steak again, sawing off a chunk and tearing it from his fork with his teeth.

‘Are you sure you’ve got enough to eat there, Margaret love?’ Caroline asked Peg. ‘Shall I ask them to make you an omelette or something?’

Perhaps it was due to the plastic surgery, but she didn’t seem to be able to stop smiling. It made her look like she had air for brains.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Peg said, then, as if she had Loz’s hands at either side of her face, forcing her not to let things lie, she turned once more to face Raymond. ‘I had a very happy childhood, in fact.’

No thanks to you
, Loz thundered in her head.

Raymond looked at his plate, chewing furiously.

Peg closed her eyes so that she could go on. The words she had practised on the mauve-room balcony came out, like a telesales script.

‘I found you again because Nan isn’t very well and I know that not seeing you makes her very sad. You need to come over and see her and Aunty Jean – who isn’t too great herself – and make whatever it is up between you all.’

She could hear Raymond breathing, heavily, but she forced herself to go on.

‘Before it’s too late. You need to see her. And Paulie needs to see his grandmother. You have to think of him.’

This last part wasn’t part of her script, but she truly believed it to be the case, and thought perhaps it might carry some weight with Raymond in his role as Paulie’s Doting Father.

Raymond let out a gasp. This was good, she thought. She was hitting home.

‘Raymond love, are you all right?’ Caroline said, quite urgently.

‘Take the boy away!’ Raymond said in a strangled voice.

‘If you don’t do it now,’ Peg forged on, her eyes still closed, fighting her way to the end of her speech, ‘it’s going to be too late and it will be very sad for them and for you and for Paulie.’

Her father made a wheezing, retching sound.

‘You might regret it for your whole life.’

‘RAYMOND!’ Caroline cried.

Her speech over, Peg opened her eyes, Paulie was being hurried out by Manuela, as her father reached forwards in his seat, choking, his eyes bulging from their sockets, the veins standing out on his forehead.

For a fleeting second, Peg marvelled at the effect her words had worked on Raymond. But then she realised what was going on. Well taught by Doll, she jumped up, hoisted him from his seat – surprisingly easy, because he was lighter than he looked – and swiftly administered the Heimlich manoeuvre. A stringy chunk of half-chewed steak and gristle shot out of his mouth and onto the white tablecloth in front of him.

‘Glass of water, Caroline,’ she said, sitting him back down again. Gasping for breath, Raymond allowed her to feed it to him, the tears still streaming down his face. It reminded her of looking after Jean.

Peg and Caroline – who had been fluttering round her husband like a startled chick – watched from a respectful distance as he attempted to regain his composure.

‘Thank you for that, Margaret,’ he said at last. He breathed slowly, in and out, then closed his eyes. ‘Thank you.’

Peg picked up a paper napkin and, with Caroline protesting that ‘The girl will do that,’ she scooped up the meat that Raymond had spat on the table and placed the crumpled ball on his dirty plate.

‘Sit down girls,’ Raymond rasped, and the two women did as they were told. When they were settled, he turned and, for the first time since she had arrived, looked squarely at Peg.

‘All right. I’ll just tell you this, Margaret. Just once and then we’re not going to mention it ever again. You’ve not got one snowball’s chance in hell of getting me back there,’ he said, emphasising each single word. ‘I want nothing to do with that place. That lazy, fat, bad bitch of a sister of mine is history to me.’

‘But what about Nan, though?’

Raymond’s lips fell into a scowl and he flared his nostrils.

‘I can’t have anything to do with either of them. It’s all in the past. This is my life now. And Paulie – and Caroline – will never, ever, meet them. Never. You hear?’

Peg gasped at the fire behind Raymond’s words. It was like he was spitting another lump of gristle out of his throat.

‘You hear me?’ he went on, his eyes cast down now to the floor, his voice trembling. ‘So don’t waste your breath.’

‘But—’

‘That’s all I’m saying about it,’ Raymond said. He took up his knife and fork and sawed into the remaining chunk of flesh on his plate. ‘You hear me?’

‘Are you sure I can’t tempt you with some more salad?’ Caroline asked, smiling her smile as if nothing had happened.

Eleven

After a strained dessert of chocolate mousse, Raymond said he had a few phone calls to attend to. Peg was led by Caroline back into the living room, where she took a seat on one of the squashy sofas and contemplated just how badly her mission had failed. She felt like just getting up and walking out, but she couldn’t find the energy to do so.

‘Raymond’s very hands-on with the business,’ Caroline said as she settled down next to Peg in front of the living-room fire. A younger woman in a black blouse and skirt – a nanny, perhaps – appeared at the door with Paulie so he could kiss his mother goodnight.

‘The doctor said he should take it more easier,’ Caroline said as the little boy was led away, a red smudge of lipstick on his cheek. ‘But there’s no stopping him.’

‘Doctor?’ Peg said.

‘He had a triple bypass a year or so back. I thought he was having another heart attack back there!’ Caroline giggled.

Nan should have known about that
, Peg thought as she stared into the flames, watching them curl round the olivewood logs like witches’ fingers.

‘You don’t talk much, do you?’ Caroline said, pouring herself a second brandy and tucking her legs up underneath her. ‘Just like him.’ She stretched her arm along the back of the sofa and laid a claw-nailed hand on Peg’s shoulder. ‘Like I said, he’s wanted to get in touch with you for ages. “Go on, then,” I said to him whenever he mentioned it, but it was “never the right time”, or “she won’t want to know”.’

Peg wondered if this was the truth, or if Caroline was just telling her what she thought she wanted to hear – keeping her sweet because she knew how furious she must be feeling.

Caroline smiled to herself and looked out at the pool, which glowed in the chilly night with pink underwater lights. ‘“Silly old Goosey,” I said to him. I call him Goosey sometimes. “Of course she’ll want to know. You’re her dad. Of course she’ll want to hear from you.” And wasn’t I right? Here you are. Just like that!’ She snapped her fingers.

Peg looked at the woman she supposed she should refer to as her stepmother and wondered if they even came from the same species.

‘You mustn’t judge him too harshly,’ Caroline said.

Why the hell not?
Peg felt her inner Loz urging her to say.

‘His mother and sister said it was best for you, darling.’ Caroline stroked Peg’s shoulder, her pearly pink nails rasping on the material of her smock. Peg fought the urge to bat her hand away. ‘When he got out, you were so settled and happy. You said so yourself at dinner – you were happy, you said.’

‘Got out?’ Peg said, turning to face her, so that she could no longer reach her shoulder.

‘Of the nick,’ Caroline said. Then, seeing Peg’s reaction, her face fell, as if the stitches holding it in its happy position had been scissored. ‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘You don’t bloody know, do you?’

Peg shook her head slowly. She wished she hadn’t had that third glass of wine at dinner. She wasn’t used to drinking and her head now felt like it was going to explode. She was really worried that she might end up splattering her brains all over the white sofa.

Caroline’s phone pierced the silence in the room with a tinny rendition of the opening line of ‘La Cucaracha’. Relieved at the distraction, she looked at the screen, at the same time trying to rearrange her face into a more pleasant aspect.

‘It’s Raymond,’ she said, jumping to her feet with a gasp of relief. ‘He wants a word. Would you just excuse me for a mo, darling?’

‘Tell me, though,’ Peg said.

Caroline paused, glass in hand.

‘Tell you what, lovey?’

‘Why was he in prison?’

‘Oh, well, um, that’s not for me to say, my darling.’ Caroline went over to Peg and patted her hand. ‘Best leave it to him to explain, eh?’ With that she was out of the door as if she had the hounds of hell at her heels.

What was it with all these women – first Carleen and now Caroline – leaving everything for the shut-jawed and inarticulate Raymond to explain?

Peg leaned her head back on the sofa headrest and closed her eyes. She wanted to talk to Loz so badly. But even if she knew how to get her phone working, she wouldn’t have been able to contact her, because she’d be at work and phones weren’t allowed in the kitchens of Seed. It was a rule that Loz had brought in herself, so she would be the last to break it.

Peg counted her breaths and tried to clear her overloaded mind. A long time passed. Sleep must have got the better of her, because when she looked up and saw Caroline standing in the doorway, the once-roaring fire had all but burned out and died.

‘Could you pop into his study for a bit, please darling?’ Caroline said, indicating with her head some indefinite place beyond the hallway. Despite the effortful cheeriness of her voice, her lipstick was blurred and her mascara was ground round her eyes and swept across her face like random watercolour brushstrokes. Her hand shook as she gripped the edge of the door.

‘Are you all right?’ Peg said.

‘Me? Course I am, dear.’

Peg got up and picked her way across the vast room to follow Caroline across the echoing hallway to a closed door in the back wall of the house. These, Peg supposed, were Raymond’s ‘offices’.

There was a doorbell in the wall, the kind you get in buildings that have been divided up into flats. Identical in fact to the doorbell in the flat Peg shared with Loz. Steadying herself against the door, Caroline pressed the buzzer.

‘Yes?’ Raymond’s voice rasped like a Dalek’s through the device.

‘I’ve got Margaret here,’ Caroline said, as if she were a secretary with a client arriving for a meeting.

‘Show her in,’ Raymond said. The door clicked open.

‘Should I come in as well?’ Caroline said into the speaker, in a tone that suggested that she really, really didn’t want to.

‘Nah, you go to bed now, Kitten,’ Raymond said.

‘In you go,’ Caroline said, ushering Peg through the door, her relief again palpable. ‘It’s the second on the right.’

The door swung shut behind Peg and she found herself in the reception to a suite of offices. She crossed the black marble floor to the door Caroline had indicated and tried the handle. It was locked. She rattled it a couple of times, but nothing happened. Then she knocked.

‘Open,’ she heard from within, and the door swung away from her.

‘Good eh?’ Raymond said from behind a vast desk in front of an arched wall of glass. ‘Voice-controlled door. Only recognises me.’

‘Yeah,’ Peg said, hovering by the door, which had closed behind her with a gentle hiss.

The room was sparsely furnished in black leather, chrome and glass, its air layered with cigar smoke and Raymond’s coal-tar-soap scent.

‘Well, take a seat, girl,’ he said in that strange, high-pitched croak of his.

He swung his chair to face her.

Peg edged forwards to the smaller, lower swivel chair in front of the desk.

‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Now then, I hear from my lovely wife that she let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.’

Peg nodded. She hardly felt able to look at him.

‘I think it’s time we had a little chat,’ he went on. ‘I expect you’ve got some questions.’

Peg nodded again. ‘I—’

‘Well, girl. I want you to know this,’ he said, sitting back and folding his hands on his belly. ‘I’m not proud of what I done in the past. Not proud at all. I’m glad you had a happy childhood, as you say. But it’s a new life now for me. I’ve got all this.’ He gestured at the pink pool, at the sweeping view of the house all lit up in the sliding glass wall to his left. ‘I’ve got Caroline and I’ve got Paulie. I’m very happy now, Margaret. After difficult times, I’ve reached a point in my life when I can say I’m at peace.’

‘I’m very glad for you,’ Peg said, trying to keep any hint of sarcasm out of her voice, trying to still the voice inside – her own now, and nothing to do with Loz – screaming ‘
WHAT ABOUT ME?
’