You Don't Have to be Good (11 page)

A pulse started up at the corner of Frank’s eye and the pain in his lower back made him lower himself carefully on to the edge of the bed. The photograph was of them, taken with the Polaroid by the pianist on the
Oriana
. He looked down at the open page of
Bleak House
, surprised that Bea had apparently persevered with such a novel. It was years since he had read any Dickens and he remembered it as dense and deadly dull. He read the lines at the top of the page, a letter from Lady Dedlock: ‘I have done all I could do to be lost . . .’ That was the thing about Dickens – always resorting to letters, which was rather a lazy narrative device in Frank’s opinion. ‘I have nothing about me by which I can be recognised . . .’ And here again, very typically, was plot, plot, plot, as if lives really were lived with such—

He peered at the page. The words wobbled and seemed terribly small. He reached for Bea’s glasses and put them on. Something was exploding quietly inside his chest, small detonations occurred in his throat and shoulders and it was hard to see. He could not remember the last time he had wept.

F
RANK OPENED
the front door on to a heavy grey day and smelt the river. Oyster Row led down to the edge of Stourbridge Common, a stretch of rough pasture that ran with the river, north-east, away from the city and towards the fens: Fen Ditton, Fleem Dyke, Devil’s Ditch. There were no tourists or colleges in this direction; no pinnacles or minarets, no King’s, Christ’s, Trinity or Jesus; instead there were the remnants of an industrial age – the towering chimney of the old pumping station and the ironwork bridge that carried the railway line over the river.

He stopped at the end of the road and looked the other way, westwards, the way that Bea’s walk to work would have taken her, beneath the flyover, over Midsummer Common and on up into the city. A boy rode at him on a bike, cycling in lazy swerving loops, both hands in his pockets. Frank dithered in the middle of the road, stepped first one way, then the other so that they nearly collided. The boy swore and shouted, ‘What you think you doing, you wanker?’ and Frank thought, I am retracing her steps, a thought so preposterous that he nearly shouted it out loud after the boy. Really, wasn’t this a job for the police? He hadn’t had the courage to say that to Bea’s work colleague. There was something in her voice that gave him no option. She didn’t sound like the kind of woman you could say no to. So, while he didn’t really have the time himself to go wandering about Cambridge, he would have to go through the motions for appearance’s sake. After all, it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the police were watching him. The end of
Lupa
would have to wait for the time being, despite the fact that he had planned on getting a good morning’s writing done and then sending off a few emails. There was his agent, Lancashire Arts . . . Frank stopped. He had reached the underpass beneath the flyover and he suddenly thought he should look for Bea’s car. Sometimes she drove to work if she was late and had a lot to carry. He looked around him at the parked cars, then behind him the way he had come. Damn it. If he was going to follow the car lead he would have to go back to the house and start again. He set off in the direction he had come, feeling really rather irritated with Bea, the police and the woman from her office. Quite how he had got himself into this situation he didn’t know. He had spent a lot of his time recently going backwards and forwards looking for her. Now that was an idea, he thought as his feet hit the path. It could be the solution he was looking for with
Lupa
. He would start the narrative again in the middle, after the wolf came out of the forest. We see Marsha’s face in the window, we see Peter’s shadow by the tree, we see . . . not the attack but cut to black then close-up of Marsha’s laughing face when she’s three years old and playing near the wood! Brilliant. Frank quickened his pace and found himself outside the house. Damn it, it was so hard to keep the creative mind focused on the here and now, and here was Bea’s car so that theory was out the window and now he had better get going again.

Back he went, hands dug deep into his coat pockets, down towards the river and off towards Midsummer Common. He kept his eyes on the ground for clues and occasionally he stopped and surveyed the common, the benches and the river, the trees and rough patches of bramble and weed. He noted the names of shuttered and silent houseboats:
Chubasco
,
Awol
,
Kestrel
. A couple of ducks and a swan hung about for bread and a solitary rower glided downstream, her oar strokes a whisper like the rhythm of a sleeper’s breath.

‘Robbers Beware. Police Operate in this Area.’ Frank paused at the sign on the tree. He tried to imagine the scenario: Bea walking this path, early this morning, laptop and bags weighing her down. He thought of her inert body on the gravel of Katharine’s drive last Christmas. He’d tried to get her to her feet but she was a dead weight so he left her there to sleep it off. He winced and looked around him. Unfortunate that Richard and Katharine had arrived home from the Seychelles very early the next morning and found her prostrate by the sundial. ‘I couldn’t lift her off the ground,’ he’d told them when they gave him the third degree. ‘You mean to say you left her outside? All
night
?’ Katharine was tossing that long face of hers, all chestnut and tanned, whinnying and baring those higgledy-piggledy teeth, while Richard in his crumpled linen suit stood watching as though hanging in the air, a heavy sadness around him. It didn’t look good, Frank understood that, and he was sorry that Adrian and Laura had seen their auntie in a heap in the dark. ‘What the hell kind of a husband are you, Frank?’ Katharine had jabbed her finger at him. Jab, jab. And then she’d given him a push on the chest with the flat of her hand, which she shouldn’t have done. No, she shouldn’t have done that. Violence bulleted up through him then, obliterating fear, hangover and shame. Richard had led her away; had told the children to go upstairs and check whether Bea needed anything.

He walked on carefully towards the bridge, placing the whole length of each foot upon the ground, not just the balls of his feet but putting his heel down too with every step, for the last thing that Katharine had spat at him the night of the senseless-Bea-in-a-heap-by-the-sundial was, ‘
Autistic.
You’re
autistic
, Frank. You
bounce
on the
balls
of your
feet
. It’s a
known
indicator of
autism
!’

He headed north, toe, instep, heel,
toe
 . . . No, that’s wrong. He skipped a step and then continued.
Heel
, instep, toe, heel, instep, toe, over Magdalene Bridge, up the street and towards the council offices on Castle Hill.

‘I’m looking for Beatrice Pamplin,’ he told the receptionist at Shire Hall. ‘She works here.’

The woman looked down her list and shook her head. ‘I don’t have a Pamplin here. Do you know the department?’

Frank thought for a moment. ‘Admin?’

She paused and looked down at her list. ‘Well it’s all admin really.’

‘Accounts?’ His mind tried to retrieve the details of Bea’s work. Something to do with deeds and figures. ‘Finance?’

The receptionist waited. He could see she wasn’t going to let him through without a name, and a department.

‘I had a call from her colleague to say she hadn’t turned up for work.’

‘I need a name, I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Frank, turning away. He’d had enough of this. First Bea doesn’t turn up for work. Then it turns out Bea doesn’t actually go to work at all. What in God’s name was going on? ‘I’ll go to a phone box and dial directory enquiries. It’ll probably be easier.’

‘Just a moment, sir.’ The receptionist called him back. ‘I have a Beatrice Kemp in Land Registry, Covenants and Deeds,’ she said. ‘Would that be her?’

‘That’s her,’ he said, tugging at his cuffs and struggling with the splinter that was Patrick that he could not remove, had never managed to be rid of. Yesterday’s Scotch was beginning to take its toll. It hurt that Bea used her maiden name at work, but of course she did. It was where
he
worked.

‘Out the door and round the corner.’ The woman pointed with her pen. ‘Park House.’

Behind the handsome, carefully restored building Frank found a warren of walkways running between featureless blocks thrown up too close for light or views. Kemp? Pamplin? Who on earth did Bea think she was? She was Pamplin for the mortgage and the insurance. Mr and Mrs Frank Pamplin. He nodded angrily to himself then looked up at the grey concrete in front of him that looked a bloody mess, like it had been slapped together by a bored child. He had only a dim image of Bea at work; it was a rear view, in a pencil skirt and heels, carrying sheaves of documents down the polished parquet of the building he had just left. But now he suspected this might have been an error. He looked about him and had the queasy sensation of being on the edge of some vast area of her life he knew nothing about. What on earth did she do here all day? A noise behind him made him jump. The door to Park House opened violently and ejected a thin woman in her twenties. She had stockinged feet and carried a pair of stilettos. She was blowing her nose noisily into a man-sized tissue.

‘Oh!’ she said when she saw Frank.

‘Excuse me,’ said Frank. ‘I’m looking for Bea.’

The woman took a step backwards. The unlit cigarette she was holding broke in her fingers and fell to the ground. She fumbled for another one, then shook her head and her face crumpled. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. ‘I’m Karen. Are you . . . ?’ She searched her bag for a lighter. ‘Are you . . . ?’ She stopped herself, fearful of making a mistake.

Frank said, ‘I’m her husband,’ and felt, for the first time that day, in control. The girl looked as though she was from another time. She had the serious, ailing face of a nineteenth-century novelist.

She grasped his arm. ‘Thank God.’ She scrabbled some more in her bag and pulled out the lighter. She took a quick look back at the building and pursed the cigarette between her lips, cupping her hand round it and bending her face as if to kiss it. ‘We can’t find her.’ She took a deep inhalation and exhaled, blowing the smoke away from Frank and flapping guiltily with her hand. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said.

‘I’ve retraced her steps.’

Karen’s eyes widened. She looked at the burning end of her cigarette. ‘Oh my God.’

‘I told the person in her office I would.’

Karen nodded feverishly. ‘Yes. Precious. Yes.’ She tapped excitedly at her chest and nodded. ‘I was there. I work with Bea.’ She opened the cigarette packet and took another one out before remembering the one in her fingers was still lit.

Frank looked around him. He thought perhaps he should go in and try and see this Precious woman. He moved towards the door. Karen put a hand out to stop him.

‘I wouldn’t if I were you. It’s hell in there.’

‘
Y
OU LET
her walk?’ Richard took a look at his wife. Her face was turned away from his as she bent over papers and lists.

‘Yes. She wanted to. Now where did I put that rentals list?’

The children had left for school and they should both be at work but Katharine had a plan to execute and he knew better than to get in the way of that.

‘Even so, darling. It’s quite a long way and some nasty things have happened on that path. Remember the girl who was dragged into the—’

‘Richard, please! My sister is a grown woman. I cannot continue to spend my life watching over her. Here.’ She passed him a brochure. ‘I think this place looks fabulous. Beautiful garden.’

Richard had been quite pleased at the suggestion they meet back at the house for coffee after the school run. He had envisaged a leisurely breakfast, some calls to work and a jolly time choosing a place to rent in London. If he were absolutely honest, work was a little quiet these days and on occasions he found himself standing in the vast atrium of his office and feeling like the captain on the bridge of a ghost ship. He missed the buzz and hustle of the coalface of finance, but his current post did at least leave him more time for family.

Katharine poured more coffee and took another slice of toast. The woman had quite extraordinary drive, a bit like his mother. And he was very proud of her work. At least she did something useful, he always told her. Saving babies all day long, now that was a real contribution, whereas he, well, some days he was hard pressed to say what he did all day.

‘I think we call this one today, now, put the deposit down and drive up and camp there this weekend. Adrian will just adore that.’ Katharine put half a slice of toast and marmalade inside her mouth and gulped down her coffee. Richard looked at the brochure and nodded.

‘It looks marvellous.’ He glanced at the front. ‘Good lord, is that really the price? Per month?’

Katharine took it away from him. ‘It’s the going rate. But it’ll only be for three months or so. Oh God.’ She reached for her list again. ‘Uniforms! By Monday.’

He had been careful not to crow over the schools issue but he was glad she had come round to his way of thinking at last. It was reassuring that Adrian would have the same sort of education as he had, without the boarding of course; Katharine would never agree to that.
In pectore robur
had been his school motto, ‘With a heart of oak’, and oddly enough, it was the way he had led his life. His mind ambled off to a forthcoming meeting with shareholders. Claudia, the bottles of Perrier, air-conditioning, and the soothing upward gradient of profit and sales. It was strange that he’d had no calls.

‘And anyway,’ continued Katharine, ‘she’d got the day wrong.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘I’m going to get Wanda in for the day tomorrow. If Bea doesn’t mind.’ She glanced at her husband. A quiver of irritability ran through her. ‘I thought I might set her to work on the cellar. And the children’s rooms. She knows what she’s doing and she’s incredibly cheap.’