The Judas Pair (15 page)

Later, a couple of days on, I remembered what George Field had said: If you take away people, there’s nothing left. One can’t be answerable for all mankind, no. But you can sure as hell stick up for the little chunks of mankind that are linked with you, no matter how that link came about – birth, relations, by adoption, love, it all counts. Podgy old George and his dumpy little wife knew the game of living while I was just a beginner.

I learned about Sheila from Geoffrey the day after the burglary. I just said thank you and shut the door. No jokes from now on, folks.

S
OMEBODY ONCE SAID,
‘You get no choice in life, and none in memory either.’ Judging by what the Victorians left in the way of knick-knacks, they made a valiant attempt to control memory by means of lockets for engravings, ‘likenesses’ in all manner of materials ranging from hairs from the head of the beloved to diamonds, and a strange celebration of death through the oddest mixture of jubilation and grief. Their memory, they seemed to think, should be neatly ordered to provide the maximum nostalgia centred on the loved one. If it needed extra emotional work to achieve that reassuring state, then the labour would just have to be endured. You can’t say the Victorians were scared of hard slogging.

I would have liked to have been as firm as they. You know what I mean, pick out especially fond moments from my friendship with Sheila and build up a satisfying mosaic of memories which would comfort me in my loss by giving assurance that all was really not wasted. Nice, but all really was wasted as far as Sheila was concerned. Finished. Done for. And for me, Sheila was gone. Anyway, I’m not resolute enough to look inward for the purpose of emotional construction. Gone’s gone.

So that terrible day I sat and sat and did nothing to my records, left letters unanswered, didn’t pick up the phone. For some reason I made a coal fire, a dirty habit I thought I’d given up. I shifted my electric fire, put newspaper in a heap in the grate, chopped wood and got it going first time. There was a residue of coal in the old coalbin by the back door so I set to burning that. The cottage became warm, snug, and the day wore on. I had no control over my memories of Sheila as I watched the flames gleam and flash in the fire.

She had this habit of watching me, not just glancing now and again to check I was still around and not up to no good, but actively and purposely inspecting me. I might be doing nothing; still she’d watch, smiling as if engaged in a private humorous conversation at my foibles. It made me mad with her at first, but you get used to a particular woman, don’t you?

Another trick she had was reaching out and absently rubbing my neck for nothing while she was reading or watching TV in the cottage. I’d be searching probably through price data of antiques and she’d just put her hand on my neck. It distracted me at first and I’d shrug her off, but moments later back she would come caressing me. There was nothing to it, not her way of starting sex play or anything. It was just her preference. She used to do it for hours.

Then there was the business with the cheese. While I was studying she would suddenly put down her book, go across to the little kitchen and bring back a piece of cheese so small it didn’t matter, and push it in my mouth. Never said anything, never had any herself. It would happen maybe twice or three times in an evening. Often she’d not even stop reading, simply carried her book with her, reading as she went. As well, she was tidy and neat, unlike most birds. They have this great reputation, don’t they, but most of them get fed up with the tidiness legend and chuck it in during their late teens. Sheila was really tidy by nature almost to the point of being a bit too careful. Nothing of hers ever got in my way. I never fell over her shoes, for instance, because they were tidied out of sight, not like some I could mention.

And the fights. We scrapped a lot, sometimes because of sex, other times because stress is part of life and you let off steam. She was irritable sometimes. She’d announce it from the doorway on arrival, standing there. ‘I’m angry, Lovejoy,’ she’d say, blazing. ‘With me or without?’ I’d say, and every time she’d fling back, ‘With you, Lovejoy, who else?’ and we’d argue for hours. I’ve chucked her out before now because of her temper. Once women get their dander up all you can do is send them packing because there’s no point in everybody getting in a rage to suit their need for a barney, is there? I’ve sloshed her, too, sometimes when she’d got me mad, and other times making love, but that’s only the love sort of coming out, isn’t it? Once I bruised her and got worried afterwards, which made her laugh and call me silly. I don’t follow their arguments, really, mostly because they make allowances for all sorts of wrong things yet go berserk over little matters you’d hardly notice.

The fire was hot on my face from staring at it. I needed one of Dandy Jack’s embroidered firescreens but wanted to see the fire. Of course, a hundred years ago people had firescreens to protect their complexions from the heat, and to shield their eyes from the firelight while reading or sewing in a poorly lit room. A bright fire, was a source of light. The complexion bit was the important thing, though. Only peasants and country-women had ruddy complexions. Elegant ladies wanted lovely pale faces on the unmistakably correct assumption that though ruddy’s only healthy, pale’s interesting.

Natural light – fires, candles, oil lanterns – confers a special feeling in a room. One day a month when I feel like it I switch all electricity off and live by natural light. You’d be surprised at the effect it induces. Try it. Natural lights have sounds, small poppings and hissings betokening they have a life of their own. And that’s another thing – notice that word I just used, betokening? By natural light, words you’d never even think of come back as it were from times before. Who uses words like that? See what even thinking of natural light can do for you. It teaches you a lot about times gone by, too. Your eyes begin to sting sometimes if you use too many oil lamps in a room, so three is a maximum or you become uncomfortable.

One odd thing is that rooms which you’d think unduly cluttered become much more acceptable by natural light. You’ve seen mock-ups of Victorian drawing rooms in museums beautifully lit by bright inert-gas strip lights, and probably been dismayed by seeing practically every inch of wall space covered by pictures, every surface littered by ornaments and clocks, and the furniture draped with hangings so you wonder how they could stand it. The reason you’re put off by all that congestion is that the museum’s got the lighting wrong. Tell them to switch everything off and put a single oil lamp on the bureau and draw the curtains.
What a difference
! Those ornaments which
should
glow by natural light do so, while the rest merely set each other off in an easy, comfortable pattern of cosy acquaintanceship. Beautiful, really beautiful. The clutter becomes friendly and spaced out. Don’t ridicule the Victorians when it’s us that’s being stupid and insensitive.

Sheila wouldn’t rub my neck any more. No cheese would suddenly be pushed absent-mindedly into my mouth. No more fights. No more sex with her. No more being watched by her smile.

The fire kept in till dawn. Twice I put the radio on. A stupid woman was trying to be crisply incisive about domestic problems that really needed a kick up the backside instead of a psychiatrist. I told her my opinion in no uncertain terms and switched her off. Later, I heard the television news about some Middle East catastrophe and switched that off as well. I managed half a cup of tea about midnight. My coal ran out about five-ish the next morning.

I cut a piece of bread and some Wensleydale cheese to feed the robin. It was down to me within seconds, shooing competitors away from the door. You can’t help waiting to see if they do different things from what you expect, or if they’ll do exactly the same as they’ve done for years. In either case you’re never disappointed.

‘Sheila used to say I was too soft with you, Rob,’ I said to the robin. He came on my arm for his cheese. ‘“You’ll forget how to go marauding,” she says – said.’ But that can’t be bad, was my standard reply to her when she said that. If that’s the worst we get up to the world wouldn’t be in such a mess. She’d insist the robin ought to go hunting worms to mangle them in the most unspeakable way because it was naturally what they did in searching for food. My cheese-feeding policy must pay off eventually, though, if you think about it. If you’re crammed full of cake and cheese you can’t fancy too many worms for at least an hour or two, can you? ‘“Anyway, cheese is good for teeth and bones,”’ I said to her. ‘“You’re foolish, Lovejoy,”’ she used to say, falling about laughing. ‘“Robins don’t have a tooth between them.”’ I used to say, so what, they’d got bones. It was a stupid argument but she would never see sense.

Any sort of hunting is only very rarely necessary, it’s always seemed to me. When the robin had surely eaten enough I scattered the remainder about on the path near the Armstrong for the sparrows and the big browny-black birds to share. Even so the robin wouldn’t have any peace. He flew at them making stabs with his beak and generally defending the crumbs against all comers. You can’t help admiring a bird like that. I wondered if he was more of a hunter than I thought, but decided to stick to my pacification policy anyway. You have to stand by your theories because they’re for that, otherwise there’s no sense in making them up.

I left them all to it and rang Geoffrey.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said dozily. ‘Look at the time.’

‘Did Sheila’s handbag turn up?’ I asked him as he strove to orient himself. He didn’t know. I said to find out and let me know or I’d pester the life out of him. It took twenty minutes for him to ring back.

‘She didn’t have a handbag with her, your young lady,’ he reported.

‘Then how,’ I asked evenly, ‘did they know to get in touch with me?’

‘The station police. They asked . . . other passengers to try to recognize . . .’

I suppressed the terrible desire to imagine rush-hour queues being invited to file past.

‘I suppose one of her workmates –’

‘Eventually.’ Geoffrey was not enjoying this. They went to her home. Your address was on the back of your photograph.’

‘Ta.’

I rang off but he was back on the blower instantly.

‘Lovejoy – anything up as well as this?’

‘Clever old bobbies should mind their own business,’ I said, clicking him off.

I knew exactly what he would do. He’d sniff about the village uneasily for a day then come round to pop the question what was I up to and warning me not to do anything silly. The answer he’d get would be a sort of mystified innocence: ‘But what on earth do you mean, Constable?’ – straight out of amateur rep which would gall him still further.

You can’t trust the law. Anybody in business will tell you that. As for me, the law is a consideration to be strictly avoided. Never mingle with it. If it’s their in force, bow your head, agree like you meant it and scarper. Then when it’s gone for the moment, carry on as normal. It’s not for people. I wonder where it all comes from sometimes. Think of it like weather, keep an eye on it and take sensible precautions when it proves intrusive.

The dawn had come. I stood at the door smoking a cigar. Red sky, streaks of crimson against, blue and white. It was really average. You get the same shallow blue-on-cream in those Portuguese vases, quite nice. I couldn’t finish my smoke. The robin was singing, rolling up his feathery sleeves for the day’s battles.

Indoors, I ran a bath, thinking, this is where I clouted Sheila that time Tinker rang up about Field. I would do my favourite breakfast, fried cheese in margarine and an apple cut into three and fried in the same pan. Three slices of bread. Tea. Heaven knows how but I managed to eat it all, with the radio going on about politics and me trying to sing with the interlude music like a fool. I banged on the dishes with a spoon pretending I was a drummer in a band. Don’t people do daft things?

I’d never forget my alarm again. The doors locked, I repaired the window. Outside, I ran some meshwire around the edge and put new bolts on the inside of all the windows. The day promised fine with a watery sun.

The bath water had cooled enough by the time that job was done. I soaked, working out my chain of suppositions.

Suppose somebody had killed Eric Field for the Judas pair. Suppose then he had learned that I’d managed to pick up the one possible gadget missing from the most costly unique set of flinters the antique world could ever dream of – a small case-hardened instrument with all the features of a Durs accessory. It had after all probably been chucked into the apothecary box from ignorance to up that particular crummy article’s price, so it was definitely a hangover from Seddon’s sale of Eric Field’s effects. Continuing the idea, suppose then he’d seen me come from Seddon’s, followed me here to the cottage – he’d have seen me give Sheila the instrument by the war memorial, seen her put it in her handbag. And the town war memorial’s as private as Eros in Piccadilly. Adrian and Jane had passed, Muriel and her tame priest were there. It could be anybody, he or she, seen or unseen.

Maybe he’d waited outside all night.

Then, seeing us depart, he’d broken in, searching, failed to find the Durs instrument, taken the carriage clock as a blind, and, seeing Sheila’s letters, guessed wrongly that she still had the instrument in her handbag. Perhaps he’d assumed I realized its importance and was too worried to have it about. So he’d sprinted off to London after her and pushed her under the train when perhaps she’d suddenly realized he was stealing her handbag. Or he’d just pushed her, and in the subsequent uproar picked up her handbag, escaping because of our splendid public’s tradition of keeping out of trouble. Now, she was dead, I had to say it, dead.

It was heavy in my hand, bulbous in my palm. It could have been a straight screwdriver except that it bent at right angles about the middle of the shaft. Two additional flanges served to catch on some projection, perhaps near a sear-spring in the flintlock. I got the impression it slotted into rather than on to something, but it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Despite my ignorance I was certain it was the object for which Sheila had been killed.