Читать книгу Good Bad Woman - Elizabeth Woodcraft - Страница 11

Lena had rung to say she’d just remembered her car needed a new MOT so we agreed we’d take my car and I’d pick her up from Finsbury Park. I hooted as I drove past her house then double-parked a couple of doors down.

Through the rear-view mirror and in the light from the lamp-posts I saw her come out of her house and walk towards the car. She was wearing her long straight maroon coat, her hair was loose and shiny and she looked exotic and mysterious. My own efforts at glamour had been to change my round dark glasses to small rectangular ones, and to put on my charcoal grey Jigsaw suit with the bootleg trousers.

As Lena settled herself into the passenger seat she asked, ‘Where’s your number plate?’

‘What?’

‘Where’s the back number plate? You have no back number plate.’

‘Oh my God, it hasn’t dropped off again. I thought that was just in summer, when it got hot. I stuck it on with some …’ I tried to remember the name.

‘Sticky-back plastic?’ Lena asked brightly. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked.’

‘It’s dropped off,’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Lena put on her best understanding voice. ‘Where do you think it dropped off?’

‘I don’t know. It could have happened anywhere.’ An idea was forming in my mind but I didn’t want to deal with it. ‘It could have happened weeks ago, months ago, I never look at the back of my car.’

‘You would have been stopped by the police by now if it had been that long. Where have you been in the last day or two?’

‘Here, there, you know.’

‘Did you hear anything?’

I looked at her.

‘You know, when it dropped off?’

We were at Stoke Newington Green. I signalled and pulled into the side of the road, got out of the car and walked round to the back. Lena followed. There was no number plate.

I looked under the car, in case the number plate was hibernating underneath where the spare wheel should be.

‘We could retrace your steps over the last twenty-four hours.’ Lena seemed to relish the prospect of a game of hunt the number plate. I ran my hand along the bumper. ‘We should organise this methodically. We could do it tomorrow morning. Frankie? Frankie, what is it?’

‘Look at that,’ I said, ‘not a mark on the rest of the car. You wouldn’t even think it had been bashed.’

‘Bashed?’ Lena said uncertainly.

I took a deep breath and decided to come clean. ‘Last night someone banged into the back of the car and then came round and punched me in the face.’

‘What? Your client’s husband?’

‘Yes … no. Let’s get back in the car.’ We settled back into our seats and I switched off the lights. ‘It wasn’t my client’s husband.’

‘Who was it then?’

‘I don’t know, someone called P. J. Kramer.’

‘Billy J. Kramer?’

‘No, P. J. Kramer. I don’t know who he is, he’s been following me. And I – well, I’ve been following him.’ I was fiddling with the ignition key.

Lena scrunched round in her seat to face me. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nor do I.’

Her face was creased with such anxiety it was contagious and with a jerk I started the car. ‘Don’t do that,’ Lena said.

I switched off the engine.

‘Now explain.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I began. ‘Did I tell you I represented Saskia the other day?’

‘You never tell me the names of the people you represent,’ she said, regretfully. ‘But Saskia … How is she? Why does she need a family lawyer? She hasn’t had children, has she?’

‘Let’s just say I represented her, but there was a man at court who seemed interested in her. Then she disappeared. I thought she might be at Gino’s last night. She wasn’t but he was, so I followed him and he ended up banging into the back of the car and punching me in the eye.’

‘Did you tell the police?’

‘I was drunk, I couldn’t tell them. And anyway, it didn’t seem right to get the police in. It’s all just hunches on my part.’

‘A punch is not a hunch.’

‘No, but in a way it was my own fault.’

‘Because – why? Don’t tell me, you were driving really provocatively. Frankie, I told you there is never an excuse for violence.’

‘Don’t lecture me, Lena,’ I said. ‘I just have to think now what I’m going to do.’

‘You could go and see if the number plate is there, where it happened.’

‘But that means going back …’

‘Well, you’ve got to, because if the number plate is there and you don’t find it, he will and then he’ll be able to find you.’

‘Oh God.’

But in the end it wasn’t him who found me – it was the police. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

When I told Lena where it had happened we agreed that there was no point going all that way back up to Highgate, especially since we were both looking so glamorous for our evening out. As we drove down towards Old Street, we assured each other that there were two possibilities. If we went to Waterlow Park and the number plate was gone, there would be nothing we could do, but it would ruin our evening. And if it was still up there, lying in the road, it was unlikely to be stolen while we, along with most of the population of London, were out having a good time.

At Old Street roundabout I was still trying to convince myself that all this had a logic and was true. When we found a parking space right outside the club I knew we had made the right decision.

The club was still quite empty. ‘This is one of the good things about being older,’ Lena said. ‘We arrive early and so we get a seat. Youth doesn’t arrive, on principle, till it’s standing room only.’ I wasn’t sure I liked being included in her comments about age. I felt I should do something childish and petulant to highlight our age difference, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I sulked.

The room was dark and small, about the size of a living room that’s a good size for a party. Tables formed a semi-circle round a raised dais, each table boasting a flickering night-light. We chose a small table near the front and I went to the bar to order a bottle of Californian Chardonnay. Already the room was beginning to fill up with women who looked the same age as me and Lena, who took all the tables. As I sat down again I was feeling old on my own account, but it meant I could stop sulking. Lena poured the wine. It was chilled and fruity and I began to relax.

Lena knew someone involved in the management of the club so she explained, ‘When there’s no act the stage is where the dancing happens.’ But a small neat woman in a tux stepped into the spotlight on the stage and announced that tonight there was an act, a singer. I was disappointed, I had got used to the idea of a loud band and dancing so I could forget all the things that wouldn’t leave my mind: Saskia and my black eye and my unreliable car and my lack of work.

When the act stepped on to the stage half an hour later the club was almost full. She looked tired, in her late thirties or early forties, and had thick coarse blonde hair. She wore a black beaded sheath which accentuated her full figure, and her black patent high-heel shoes highlighted her good legs. She tapped the microphone and I could see her hand trembling as she adjusted the height of the stand. The piano, her only accompaniment, began to play softly. She coughed and missed her entrance.

My heart sank. Had I left my warm friendly flat with a good night’s TV for this? I remembered I had also left my mother and sat forward, willing the singer to do well.

She sang ‘Cry Me a River’. Her voice was soft and smoky. The longing and loss in her voice touched me and I guessed most of the people in the room. Everyone was silent, no glasses tinkled, no money rattled in the till at the bar. Everyone was transfixed by the beauty she brought to the song. As she sighed the last notes and hung her head in conclusion the place erupted with applause. She looked genuinely surprised and pleased, smiling and bowing, holding her hands pressed together between her knees.

She sang ‘Funny Valentine’, ‘Georgia’, ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ and all those sleepy, sexy songs that make you miss everything you thought you had but didn’t, or thought you wanted but couldn’t.

At the end of the set women were whistling and whooping and the MC, leaping back on to the stage from her position on a stool at the side, had trouble quietening them down. ‘Margo will be back in half an hour,’ she said, and there was a scattering of applause before people drifted to the bar. A jazz trumpet began sobbing softly through the PA system.

I went to the bar to order another bottle of wine. When I got back to the table it was empty. I knew where Lena would be: standing at the side of the stage talking to the singer. I wasn’t surprised. Lena was an old performer, she’d been a dancer and was very good at telling other artists how much she liked their work. Sometimes, as I did then, I sat and watched the recipients melt with pleasure beneath the warmth of her sweet praise. Margo smiled, looking down, frowning slightly with a deprecatory expression. Then Lena gestured towards our table and Margo smiled over at me and I nodded in reply. Lena was explaining something and Margo looked at her watch. Lena wrinkled her nose and patted Margo’s arm. Margo turned and went backstage and Lena returned to the table. ‘She’s going to join us for a drink,’ she said, pulling over an empty chair from the next table. ‘At first she said she wouldn’t but I convinced her that there would only be serious intellectual conversation and dry white wine at our table so she relented. I think she might even have a small interest in you. She said she’d heard of you when I mentioned your name.’ She raised her eyebrows at me and I raised mine back.

Feeling pleased with myself, I sauntered to the bar and called to the bar woman who was waiting as a glass filled with lager. ‘Wine glass,’ I mouthed. ‘For the singer.’ Across the heads of the crowd, she passed me a glass and gave me a wink. The stud in her nose flashed.

I had just sat down when Margo came to the table, moving worriedly through the crowd, smiling occasionally at people who said hello. She was wearing another dress, red, short and tight, with high red sparkling shoes. I felt confident that the Jigsaw suit was good. She sat down and Lena introduced us.

‘You’re a barrister,’ Margo said. I nodded. Sometimes it turns people on that you’re a barrister and I was happy with that.

‘And you’re a wonderful singer,’ I said, pouring wine into her glass. ‘How long have you been singing?’

‘Not long,’ she said. ‘A year or so. Are you a wonderful barrister?’

‘Oh, the easy ones first. I don’t know if I’m wonderful, but I think I’m quite good and I fight hard. Why? Do you need a barrister?’ I hoped she didn’t, since a professional relationship might interfere with the relationship I had in mind.

‘Maybe. Don’t we all sometimes?’

‘I suppose so, possibly, mmm.’

Lena said, ‘I’m just going to talk to …’ and slipped away.

I was looking at Margo’s almond-shaped eyes. There were lines at the corners and her mascara was slightly smudged, but they were the deepest blue I had ever seen.

‘Why are you wearing dark glasses?’ she asked me.

‘I have a black eye,’ I said. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘Take them off.’

Reluctantly I removed the glasses. She raised her hand and gently smoothed her fingertips over the bruise. Her hand was cool. ‘You can hardly see it,’ she murmured, kindly. ‘Don’t put them back on. You have lovely eyes. I like brown eyes.’

‘How did you come to be singing here tonight?’ I asked. I watched her mouth as she spoke about knowing the bar woman who was a friend of the manager and the band they’d booked having let them down and the manager having rung her friend who had rung her. She spoke softly and slowly and her full red-stained lips formed the words hypnotically. I had to stop myself licking my own lips.

She looked at me watching her and smiled. For a moment neither of us spoke. She looked at her watch.

‘I’ve got five minutes. I need to get some fresh air before I go back on stage,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come outside while I have a smoke?’

We walked to the side of the stage and she led me out through a fire door into the chill dark air. We were in an alley, with high brick walls on either side. The narrow rectangle of the sky was clear and there were some stars. ‘Can we see the Plough from here, do you think?’ I asked her.

She leaned against one wall and took a pack of Camel cigarettes from the small bag on her wrist.

I don’t like smoking – I don’t like the smell of smoke, I dislike the sight of a saucer filled with squashed cigarette butts, I hate it when people smoke in the non-smoking compartments of trains, but now I was standing in a dark alley next to a woman with a cigarette in her hand. And at that moment all I wanted in the world was to slip my hand in my pocket, pull out a silver lighter and flick it open to light her cigarette. But I didn’t have a silver lighter, or any lighter at all, and she lit her own cigarette with a match which she waved out with a snap of her wrist.

She rubbed one arm with the other.

‘Are you cold?’ I asked, ‘Do you want my jacket?’ I went to take it off.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘You’ll get cold too.’

I leaned against the wall opposite and watched her as she smoked, inhaling deeply, creasing her eyes against the smoke. ‘It always feels so good, up there on stage,’ she began, looking down the alley. ‘It’s such a buzz.’ She shook her head and inhaled again. ‘It’s so different from the rest of my life. I feel like a different person, a stranger. And tonight there’s you. I don’t know what’s happening. I’ve never spoken to a barrister before.’ She looked me straight in the eye. ‘I didn’t know barristers could be lesbians.’

‘Barristers can be anything,’ I said. ‘It’s not who we are, it’s what we say that counts. I suppose it matters sometimes …’ I could feel myself getting boring, but I couldn’t stop. ‘Sometimes you don’t get the briefs. But that’s usually because you’re a woman, not because of who you sleep with.’

‘How long have you been a barrister?’

‘Ten years.’

‘Ten years is a long time. What would my life be like if I’d started doing this ten years ago?’

‘I don’t know, what was your life like ten years ago?’

‘Well, ten years ago it wasn’t bad, it just got worse as time went by.’ She shook her head again, then looked up. ‘What did you say about the Plough?’

We both gazed up at the sky. I took a step forward and could feel her close to me. I ran my hand down her arm and felt her shudder. We looked at each other and I took another step towards her and put an arm across her shoulders, watching her face to check her reaction.

She was an inch or two shorter than I was and she looked up at me with her head on one side. I pushed her gently back against the wall and put my hands on either side of her head. She slid her arms around my waist and closed her eyes.

She felt soft and ripe in my arms. I bent my face into her hair and smelt perfume and cigarette smoke. She raised her eyelids and looked at me while I put my hand against her cheek. It felt like peach down. I tilted her face to mine and kissed her. Her lips were as soft and full as they had looked in the club, and now they parted slightly. I slid my tongue between her teeth and in the warm dark wetness of her mouth her tongue touched mine.

I pulled her closer and felt the curves beneath her dress all the way down my body. She moved her arms up round my neck, sliding her hands into my hair, pulling my mouth closer into hers.

As we drew apart she smiled at me. She licked her lips. ‘I feel like a stranger in paradise,’ she said. ‘You’re a good kisser.’

‘It takes two to tango,’ I said.

‘I’ve always been fond of dancing,’ she murmured, and pulled my head down.

After five minutes or perhaps ten she looked at her watch. ‘Oh God, I’ve got to go back on.’

‘What time do you finish?’ I asked and then remembered my mother. ‘I’d like to see you after, go for a drink, invite you home with me, but my mother is staying. She came up to do Christmas shopping.’

‘Don’t talk to me about Christmas,’ she said. ‘It’s OK, I’d like to invite you home with me, but I can’t.’

‘Another time,’ we said together.

I took out my wallet and gave her my card, writing my home number on the back. I wrote her number on the reverse of another and slid it back into my wallet.

She walked slowly on to the stage for her last set. She sang ‘One Fine Day’ in her soft, husky voice of honeyed gold. And I thought that I certainly wanted her for my girl.

As the room erupted with whooping and cheering, Margo was gazing at the back of the room. I turned and saw Saskia.

And she did look remarkable. She was wearing my grey shirt, which looked stained and crumpled, and, I noticed with some concern, torn along one of the sleeves. Her hair was flat, which made her look subdued, crushed. The bruising on her face wasn’t so visible. But her expression as she stood staring into the room was bleak and desperate.

I stood up abruptly and pushed my chair back. I was torn between staying to applaud and smile at Margo and going to speak to Saskia. I patted my wallet which contained Margo’s phone number and turned towards the back of the club.

The crowd seemed to have swollen. Everyone was on their feet now, clapping and whistling, stamping their approval, pressing towards the stage. I pushed my way to the back, stepping on toes, knocking elbows, shouting, ‘Sorry, excuse me, sorry, sorry, excuse me.’ When I got to the back of the room, Saskia was gone.

I went through to the small lobby and out into the street. It was narrow and dark, lined with cars. There was no sign of her. I walked round to the side of the building and looked down the alley, which was lit by a solitary light, beaming over the fire doors that Margo and I had come out of an hour before. She wasn’t there. I walked back to the front of the club and stood looking round for two minutes.

Had she seen me? Had she come to see me? How would she know I would be there?

The door to the club banged open and people began to spill out on to the street. Lena came over to me. ‘What are you doing out here, sweetie? But more importantly, tell me about Margo. Shall I make my own way home, or can we journey together?’

‘I have no plans,’ I said. ‘Let’s find the car.’