The House on Fortune Street (8 page)

later with two blue mugs.“Please feel free to keep your coat on,” he said, handing Sean a mug and seating himself opposite. “There’s about ten days a year when this office is comfortable.” He himself was wearing a dark green pullover and brown corduroy trousers that once again made Sean think of open fields and country lanes. “I’m fine,” Sean said. “Thanks for seeing me at such short notice.”

“It’s nice to have a break from my normal duties. Besides, I’m eager to hear how things are going.” He regarded Sean expectantly.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about. I’m afraid I’m a little behind. It’s not that I’m not working.” He held up his file of pages. “But each person’s story is so fascinating, and so heartrending.” He trailed off, taking refuge in his coffee.

“I see,” said the secretary. “The good news is that you’ve become a convert to our cause. The bad news is that everything is taking longer than you’d expected.”

“Exactly,” said Sean gratefully.

“I should tell you that Valentine phoned last week. He wanted me to know that his half of the book was virtually done but he was concerned that you might not make the deadline. He said you were a perfectionist.”

Carefully Sean set the coffee down. Was there no end to Valentine’s betrayals? His brain seethed with retorts and denunciations: Valentine’s wretched prose, the way he cut every possible corner. He realized that the secretary was waiting. “That’s one way to put it,” he said lamely. “We’re not ideal coauthors.”

“But that is your present relationship. We have a contract and money has changed hands.” The secretary was sitting straighter, his voice firm. “Let me take you into my confidence. Not all members of the society were happy that we were spending our limited funds in this way, but I was convinced that the right book could help people, and help to advance our cause. I very much need the book to be finished soon, and

within the terms we agreed upon. Tell me what I can do to facilitate that.”

The man’s sudden briskness was even more jolting than Valentine’s perfidy. How naive he had been in assuming that the secretary’s sympathies would transcend his business interests. For a moment Sean felt like fleeing. Then, for some mysterious reason, he found himself picturing Bridget and her husband, standing beside the dark wood as the stars came out. The image was, as she had described the actuality, consoling. “I don’t mean to suggest that things are dire,” he said. “Basically I have drafts of everything except the last section, and the extra one you wanted on mental suffering. I’m sure I can have the manuscript on your desk by the end of the year. Meanwhile you could go ahead and give Valentine’s chapters to a good copy editor. That way everything should be done by mid-January.”

“Let me have a look at my diary,” said the secretary. He stood up and retrieved it from his desk. “Suppose you bring me the manuscript the Wednesday after Christmas. And let’s forget about the mental suffering. It’s by no means certain that the board members would approve such a section, and we can always add it if we do a second edition. How does that sound?”

Sean said it sounded fine.

“Good. I’ll send you an e-mail confirming these new dates. You may not have read your contract closely, but there is a clause that fifty per-cent of the advance is forfeit if the manuscript is late. I would hate to have to invoke that, but given the choice between doing so and losing my job, you’ll understand which I’d choose.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Sean, getting out of his chair.

“So I’ll see you here on the twenty-eighth,” the secretary said.

Sean noted the small rudeness of his remaining seated. Somehow that made it easier to reply crisply that he would be here between ten-thirty and eleven that day. He was almost at the door when a thought

stopped him.“I was wondering,” he said, “if I could talk to the balloonist, the man who hoped to see his wife’s soul take flight?”

The secretary looked up at him calmly. “That was me,” he said.

n the weeks before Christmas Sean anesthetized himself with his chapters. He felt, as he had when working on Keats, a keen desire to make every sentence as good as possible but a greater ease in doing so without the poet’s dazzling example. He sent an e-mail to Valentine announcing that he needed a small extension but that his chapters would require only light editing. Valentine wrote back in his usual cheery fashion: Sounds good. The secy. has asked for some revisions on my pages. That’ll teach me to give them in early. Sean tried not to gloat; some revisions, he hoped, meant hours of strenuous rewriting. How fortunate, he thought, that Valentine had not grasped what he was trying to say during that phone call on the train, about writing another book together. To Abigail he offered the news of the extended deadline

and asked if she could be very specific about her Christmas present. “And vice versa,” she said.

The previous year they had spent Christmas with Sean’s parents on the Isle of Wight, but this year neither of them had time to make the journey. Happily Tyler had invited them to spend Christmas at his country house in Wiltshire. The house, like its owner, occupied a special place in Sean and Abigail’s history—they had spent a weekend there right after he finally left Judy—and, as they drove down in their rental car on Christmas Eve, the mood between them lightened. Sean’s chapters, save for the proofreading, were done and the company’s Christmas show in Margate was going well; Abigail seemed more cheerful than in several weeks.

Two other couples were staying at Tyler’s, and after a boisterous and

delicious dinner Abigail suggested charades. She did an excellent Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and everyone applauded Sean’s The Blind Assassin. Together he and Tyler attempted Endymion, which Abigail guessed on the fourth syllable. When they at last retired to their room she turned to him even before the door was closed and kissed him, eagerly and solemnly. Then she led him to the armchair by the window, opened the curtains so that they could see the high white winter clouds, and sat in his lap.

“Tell me about the best Christmas you remember,” she said. “Besides this one? The one when it snowed and we all went tobog-

ganing on the hill behind our house. My father made this fantastic run with red flags and taught me how to steer a sledge. We made this huge snowman at the bottom.”

“I remember that Christmas,” said Abigail. “I was with my grand-parents. We didn’t go sledging but we did make a snowman. My grand-mother even let him wear a scarf she’d knitted.”

When they went to bed, shortly after four, she made love with him as she used to do, in pursuit of pleasure rather than duty. Afterward, as he lay drowsily beside her, Sean allowed himself to hope that the glittering streams were flowing again. Perhaps she had had a few drinks with Valentine, but so what. All couples had tricky times. The important thing was not to allow them, as he and Judy had done, to overwhelm the relationship. As soon as he handed in his chapters, he would sit down with Abigail and talk about how they could have a better balance between work and play. How much money did he need to earn? Might they get married?

hey arrived back in London on the afternoon of Boxing

Day to find the whole house dark—Dara was still away in Edin-

burgh—and, after two nights’ absence, icy cold. They turned on the heat and went to buy groceries. While he printed out his pages, Abigail unpacked and repacked. Then they made moussaka together and, as they ate, discussed her schedule. She would be back on New Year’s Eve, in time for the party the stage manager and his wife were throwing. For once Sean was almost impatient for her to be gone, so eager was he to check his chapters one more time and put them in the secretary’s hands. The next day he reread them and found to his relief that they had not unraveled while his back was turned; the writing was clear and, at times, even eloquent. He was at the Belladonna Society’s office by ten-thirty the following morning.

He and the secretary exchanged Christmas greetings. Then, he could scarcely wait, he handed over his pages.

“Thank you,” said the secretary. “I’m sorry if I was a little heavy-handed during your last visit. I didn’t mean to come on like the mob with threats and contracts.” His face crinkled with the same look of concern he had worn as Valentine told the story of his fictional aunt.

Hastily Sean reassured him. “A kick up the backside was just what I needed. I’d got so carried away by the interviews, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. Thank you for your patience.” He would have liked to have mentioned his idea for a more extensive book but now was not the time; first he must get free of Valentine. They parted in a wave of good wishes for the new year.

ack at the house a loutish boy, surely a student doing a holiday job, was ringing the doorbell. “It’s for downstairs,” he said, holding out a large brown parcel. “There’s been no one home the last

couple of times I’ve tried to deliver.”

“Thanks,” said Sean. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”

As he carried the package into the house, he recalled that Dara was coming home today. It would be a nice, neighborly gesture to turn on the heat in her flat, buy some provisions. He was so pleased with the idea that he turned around and headed at once to the corner shop. Then, with a bag full of groceries, he picked up the parcel, retrieved her keys from the hook in the hall, and let himself into the flat.

Inside it was cold and dark. He set the package on the table next to a stack of Christmas cards—perhaps Abigail had put them there?—and, trying to make the place more welcoming, went to open the curtains across the French doors. He adjusted the thermostat and put the groceries away, setting the apples in a bowl on the table with a note: Wel-come home, Dara. Milk in fridge. Love, Sean. He was about to leave when he noticed that the bedroom door was closed and decided to check on the radiator in there too. Once again the curtains were drawn and he crossed the room to open them. Turning back to the radiator, he saw her.

Dara was lying under the covers, her face tilted toward the door, her hair spread across the pillow. When he knelt down beside her, he saw that she was very pale. He touched her cheek—there was no need to do so; he already knew—and found her skin as cold as the sheets.

He was moving toward the phone when he saw an envelope lying on top of the chest of drawers; Mum and Dad, read the inscription. It was unsealed. Without thinking, he looked inside and saw not a sheet of paper but many little pieces. He lifted one out. And th— Quickly he put the envelope in his pocket and continued to the phone.

ochlan came and fetched him six days later, the day after

the funeral. As they drove west out of London, over the ridge of the Chilterns, Sean sobbed until Lochlan pulled off the motorway and

stopped beside a country road. “There, there,” he kept saying. “Please don’t cry.” Sean could hear his words, but he felt helpless to obey. Blindly he got out of the car and started walking along the grassy verge. Through his thin-soled shoes he could feel the frozen ground. Then— he didn’t know how far he’d walked—a van rattled by, much too fast and too close. He stopped next to a stand of rushes, took his first deep breath, and blew his nose.

“I can’t talk,” he managed to say when he got back to the car, “but I think I’ve finished crying.”

“Good,” said Lochlan. He put on Vivaldi and started driving again. They left the motorway for the busy country roads near Whitney and, at last, turned onto the much smaller road that led to his and Cleo’s village. Their house was at the bottom of the lane next to the village church. As soon as they stepped inside, Cleo appeared in the gloom of the hall. “We’re glad you’re here,” she said, and hugged him.

Lochlan led him up the stairs to the guest room where he’d stayed on his previous visits. The windows looked out over the garden, past the swaybacked roof of the church, to stubbled fields. Between them stood a large desk.

“Here,” Lochlan said. “You’ll have plenty of space to work when you feel better.”

“Thank you,” said Sean. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

e spent much of the next week asleep. He rose long after

Lochlan had left for work, ate cereal, went for endless walks across the frozen fields, did whatever Cleo asked in the way of chores. The day after he arrived she told him that, although she was only six months’ pregnant, she had taken leave from her job as a schools’ inspector on the advice of her doctor. But there was nothing to worry about, she

added quickly. Sean nodded, and allowed himself to be reassured. For a few seconds, concern for Cleo had distracted him from the images that were always right there, just behind his eyelids: Dara as he had last seen her alive, or as he had last seen her.

After he had called the police and her parents—she had left their numbers beside the phone—he had dialed Abigail’s number. As usual he got her voice mail; she was doing two shows a day. He had left a message saying, Please call. It’s important. Then he had taken a chair from the living room and sat down beside Dara. “I am so sorry,” he had said. Being in her presence was not at all like the trauma he had described in the book; rather, what he had felt was an enormous calm. He did not know how long he sat there, watching her, before there came a knock at the door. He touched her cheek one more time, and went to let in the police.

An hour later he was back upstairs, sitting on the sofa, when the phone rang. He answered at once, hoping for Abigail. “Super that you got your chapters in,” said Valentine. “The secretary’s passed the whole thing on to the copy editor.” He was in the neighborhood and wondered if Sean could meet for a drink at the Lord Nelson. As he walked there, Sean pictured himself telling Valentine about Dara; the two had met once, at one of Abigail’s shows. Telling her parents, he had kept to the bare facts and got off the phone as quickly as possible. Now he imagined describing the solemn beauty of his brief vigil at her bedside, the shock of realizing, from the offhand remark of a policeman, that Dara—Abigail’s friend, his neighbor—had taken her own life.

When he stepped into the pub, Valentine waved from a corner table. “I bought you a scotch,” he said, which should have been a signal. His sleek leather jacket lay on the bench beside him. They raised their glasses, and Valentine said a few more complimentary things about Sean’s share of the book, how his perspective had deepened the material; how fascinating his interviews were. Sean, to his abiding shame,