Читать книгу Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life - Rosie Thomas - Страница 24

The front door bell began to ring. Once it had started it seemed that it would never stop; whoever was doing it must be holding his thumb pressed to the bell push.

Darcy was already awake, lying in bed beside Hannah in the room flooded with yellow early morning light, but the sound pierced his skull like a dart. He had not heard any car.

Hannah stirred and mumbled, ‘What is it?’

Darcy left the bed, put on his dressing gown over his pyjamas.

‘I’ll see to it,’ he said.

He met Hannah’s au pair girl at the top of the stairs, also in her dressing gown.

‘I’m going,’ Darcy said to her. The bell stopped shrilling and there came a barrage of knocking. The stairway dipped in front of him, and the wide mouth of the hallway, and the slivers and lozenges of reflected sunlight lay like broken glass on the floor. He could hear the sounds of his children waking up, disturbed by the thunderous noise.

Darcy descended the stairs, flat-footed in his slippers.

He opened the door, but he already knew who would confront him.

There were five of them this time, not the same men but enough like the ones who had come before. They wore shirts and ties and short casual jackets, aggressive clothes, and in his nightwear Darcy felt disabled and exposed.

‘Why are there so many of you?’ he asked. It was half-past six in the morning, nearly the end of May.

‘Darcy Clegg?’ one of the policemen said.

‘You know who I am. Yes. I’m Darcy Clegg.’

‘My name is Detective Inspector Hely, Serious Fraud Office.’

The other four men had come into the house, and they stood in a phalanx around Darcy as if they feared that in defiance of them and his faltering heart muscle he might break out and try to run away across his own lawns and into the dewy countryside.

‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’

The policeman recited the charges, and cautioned him. To Darcy the scene had a cardboard quality, like the cheapest of cheap police dramas. In his cold and rational moments he had understood that they would come in just this way, and had feared and dreaded it, yet now that it was happening it seemed insignificant, almost comical. He might even have laughed, until he turned and looked behind him and saw the ring of faces at the head of the stairs.

Freddie and Laura stood fenced behind the banisters, gripping the oak spindles with their hands, staring down in bewilderment. Cathy hovered beside them, her suntanned legs bare underneath her short robe. Lucy had gone to London for some reason, Darcy recalled. He knew that the policemen were staring up at his daughter too. Her beauty struck him anew, and he felt a spasm of despair that he should have exposed her to this scrutiny. He saw Barney with her, rubbing his face in disbelief, and then Hannah pushing past them and running down the stairs.

Hannah’s robe was silk, like her nightdress, and the sheeny double skin seemed to slide over the loose curves underneath it as she ran. The policemen looked at her too, and Darcy knew that they would talk about this afterwards, and laugh about it. He clenched his fists and in a welter of hot images wondered if he tried to hit them whether they would pinion his arms behind him and warn him to come quietly. The urge to inappropriate laughter renewed itself and his heart squeezed, a needle of pain in his chest before inflating again, to remind him that he was old, and guilty.

Hannah grabbed his arm. ‘What do they want?’

She held her hair back with one hand, and down the calyx of her sleeve Darcy saw the way the soft flesh of her underarm sagged away from the bone. This evidence of her ageing reminded him that he loved her, and the life here that he had seemingly destroyed by trying to preserve it. That was all he had tried to do, wasn’t it? The mechanism of self-exculpation quivered wearily within him again and the detachment of a spectator at a bad drama faded and left him.

‘We shall have to ask you to come with us,’ Hely said.

Darcy wanted to lay his head on his wife’s shoulder. He was tired enough to close his eyes.

‘They have come to arrest me,’ he said.

At the top of the stairs Mandy was trying to lead Laura and Freddie away. Laura began to howl.

Hannah spun round to the policeman. She looked ready to fight him herself, shouting at him, ‘You can’t come to an innocent man’s house and drag him away in front of his children.’

‘Don’t, Hannah,’ Darcy said. ‘It’s all right. There’s nothing to worry about.’ It was the litany he had repeated to her a hundred times already, but the crack of disbelief that he saw widening in her face made it seem a pointless reiteration. ‘I may get dressed first, I suppose?’ he asked the policemen.

Barney and Cathy were beside him.

‘Can they do this?’ Barney said to Darcy.

‘Oh yes, we can,’ one of the younger men said with relish. ‘Even to your Dad.’

Two of the policemen accompanied Darcy upstairs. They let him dress in a dark suit, but they did not give him time to shave. When they came down again Darcy seemed shrunken inside the dark envelope of his clothes.

‘When will you let him out?’ Hannah demanded.

‘I couldn’t say,’ the senior policeman replied. ‘The charges are serious, and bail depends on a number of factors.’

‘It shouldn’t take long, perhaps only a few hours,’ Darcy said. ‘Call McIntyre and tell him what’s happened. Tell him to come as soon as he can.’

The men took Darcy outside, the two of them who walked on either side of him holding his upper arms. They ducked into one of the waiting cars with him. Hannah, Barney and Cathy went out after them but Darcy did not look round as he was driven away.

Barney muttered, ‘Oh, Christ, I can’t believe it. Why didn’t he say it meant this? What has he done?’

Hannah rounded on him, hard-eyed, as angry as when she had faced up to the policemen.

‘He’s done nothing.’ Her forefinger with its red nail jabbed at Barney, as if she would gouge it into him. ‘Nothing at all. Remember that, when they ask you.’

Then she turned away from them and ran into the house.

The news travelled quickly enough. By the evening of the same day the Grafton couples and apparently most of the rest of the world had heard about Darcy’s arrest. Hannah grimly answered the telephone every time it rang. To the newspapers and the reporters with their insinuating or openly insulting questions she responded with a terse refusal to comment. To the friends who telephoned in shock or sympathy she said something like,

‘It’s to do with an alleged misappropriation of funds, but he’s not guilty of anything. His solicitor is with him, he’s very confident that he’ll be out in a matter of hours. I’ll tell him you rang. Yes, yes of course I’m okay. It’s only Darcy I’m worried about.’

Almost as soon as she had replaced the receiver after one of these calls, the ringing would start again.

Barney and Cathy telephoned Lucy at Patrick’s Spitalfields house.

‘Shall I come home?’ Lucy asked them.

‘I don’t think you need to if you don’t want to,’ Cathy advised her. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Worried about Dad.’

‘Yeah. I meant you.’

After a moment Lucy answered, ‘Strange. Sad, and small. But I’m relieved to be myself again. Just me, no one else to be afraid for. As if I can deal with anything, if it’s just to do with me.’

‘Good. That’s good, isn’t it? Stay where you are for now. It’s probably better. I’ll let you know as soon as anything else happens here. There are reporters hanging about outside, trying to see in.’

Lucy put the phone down and sat in her leggings and holey grey jumper, cross-legged amongst the needlework cushions on Patrick’s Knole sofa. She pushed her thicket of beaded plaits and miniature pigtails away from her white face.

‘My dad’s been arrested, on a fraud charge. The police came this morning.’

Patrick had heard about Darcy Clegg from Nina.

‘Poor Lucy.’

‘Poor him, more. Don’t sympathize too much with me, or I’ll start crying.’

He patted her shoulder. ‘Fine. Not another sympathetic syllable.’

Lucy looked up at him. ‘Why’re you and Nina being so nice to me? You don’t even know me.’

Patrick shrugged. ‘Nina has her own reasons, I can’t answer for her. As for me, you can see I’ve got plenty of space.’

Lucy loved the spare grandeur of Patrick’s house. Even though she was a stranger, even though she felt weak and dismayed, she had been comfortable in it as soon as Patrick had brought her here from the clinic, yesterday morning. The rooms were half-empty and wholly soothing compared with those at Wilton. The covers and cushions here, all made of dark heavy stuff that seemed to have been mended and made from something else, looked even better after they had been sat on and lived with, unlike Hannah’s.

Lucy had slept surprisingly well, without need of the pills she had been given at the clinic, between darned linen sheets in a huge oak bed with an embroidered canopy.

‘It’s not really to do with having a spare bedroom, is it?’

‘It is very spare.’

‘Are you lonely?’

Patrick frowned at her. He liked this girl with her alternately disaffected and inquisitive manner, and he guessed that she was probably quite brave. There had been no sign of tears, despite her warning, but that did not make him think that the ordeal she had undergone had left her unscathed.

‘Yes. But no more so than plenty of other people.’

Lucy reached for his hand and wound her fingers between his.

‘I was lonely in that clinic. They were quite kind. I wouldn’t want Nina to think it wasn’t anything but fine in that way, only it was just me who was doing that thing. No one else could help me, and it was right that I should have to do it on my own. I felt very solitary. No baby, no nothing. Perhaps it was good for me. I’ve never had to be singular before, with being a twin. But I didn’t even want Cathy to come.’

Very softly, almost to herself, Lucy added, ‘It was right to do it that way. My responsibility. No one else to blame or judge. Anyway, you don’t have to be lonely now, with me here, do you?’

‘Thank you.’

Patrick settled beside her on the sofa, not trying to disengage his hand although the connection seemed strange. He did not hold hands much.

Understanding that she did not want to talk any more about her abortion he said, ‘Tell me about your father.’

She tilted her head downwards so that the teased hair hid her face.

‘All our life he has seemed so huge. When we were tiny he seemed to fill the sky and my sister and I thought he could do anything. Like fly, or stop the rain. He wasn’t around that much, but when he was everything seemed to flow out of him, fun and excitement and money and reassurance and confidence. He never said no to things like our mother did.’

Seeing Patrick’s expression Lucy grinned through her fringes. ‘Yeah. Spoilt kids, eh? He was always telling us that himself.’

The grin vanished. ‘Oh, God! Why am I talking about him in the past? When he got ill, it was – it was like the first time I’d understood that he really isn’t everlasting. Now there’s this, whatever’s happening. I feel like I should be looking after him.’

After a moment, she said, ‘I really love him. I don’t care what he has or hasn’t done.’

Patrick felt suddenly envious of Darcy Clegg, in prison or not. ‘I’m sure he would like to hear you say that.’

She nodded. ‘Yeah. I’ll have to try and tell him, when we both get home again.’

Jimmy Rose rang Wilton as soon as he heard the news. Hannah had gone upstairs with Laura, and it was Cathy who answered the telephone.

‘Lucy? Is that you?’

‘Who is calling?’ Cathy said coolly.

‘Ah, don’t be that way. I’ve been thinking and worrying about you. Have you decided what you want to do?’

‘Lucy isn’t here. She’s gone to London.’

In the silence that followed, in spite of everything else, Cathy allowed herself a little smile.

Anger edged the brogue out of Jimmy’s voice. ‘Why did you not tell me it was you?’

‘You didn’t give me a chance.’

‘All right. How is she?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Jesus! Why would I not? Do you think I don’t care for her?’

Cathy sighed. ‘She’s okay. She’s staying with a friend.’

‘Did she …?’

‘Yes. Yes, she did. By herself, because that was what she wanted. Are you happy now?’

‘Of course not.’ Jimmy twisted in the armchair to peer over his shoulder. He realized that Star had come in with her bag of exercise books earlier than usual. She put her burden down without looking at him and left the room again. Jimmy changed his tone.

‘I called to talk to Hannah. Will you tell her if there’s anything I can do she’s only got to ask?’

‘I’m sure she’ll be grateful.’

Sarky little bitch, Jimmy thought. Both of them.

‘But I don’t think there’s anything now. Daddy’s solicitor just telephoned. He’s been released on bail, and they’re on their way home.’

‘That’s grand news. Who stood bail for him?’

‘My uncle and Andrew Frost.’

Jimmy was shocked by this. He protested, ‘He could have asked me. Why didn’t he ask me?’

‘I don’t know. Because he asked Andrew, I suppose.’

‘Yes. Well, if there’s anything else, tell him.’

He hung up. Staring out of the window into the garden he saw the unpruned branches of shrubs whipped by an unseasonal cold wind, and the first threads of rain scribbling the glass. He was angry with Cathy Clegg and snubbed by Darcy. The sour view of his living room and the wedge of garden and the hedges and back windows and ornamental conifers of the dead-end of Grafton fed the anger with the fuel of his failure and disappointment. Jimmy sat with his fists clenched between his knees until Star came in again. She sat down in a chair, removed from him, and opened a book.

Watching her, Jimmy thought that her supercilious detachment was calculated to enrage him. A quarrelsome dialogue rehearsed itself in his head until, as if the preamble had already been uttered, he murmured,

‘Why are you such a bitch?’

Star lifted her head. Her face was cold, her top lip lifting slightly as if she was aware of a nasty smell.

‘If I am it’s because you make me one.’

Her cool voice recalled Cathy Clegg. Darcy’s failure to ask for his help took on the status of a deliberate insult. Had the destructive Lucy said something to him? Even as he thought of her a wave of longing for her and the baby, and what might have been, weakly washed over him. His resentment fastened on Star, crackling, ready to ignite.

‘It’s nothing to do with me. Except that I have to live with you. Why is it me who has to be married to a frigid dyke?’

Star closed her book and it slid to the floor. She stood up and stepped deliberately towards him. Then she swung her hand and slapped him in the face. His head jerked backwards and a thread of spittle whipped from the corner of his mouth.

‘Don’t call me a dyke,’ she whispered.

Jimmy licked his lips, then smeared them with the ball of his thumb, looking down at it for blood.

‘I’ll call you whatever I bloody like.’

She was already backing away from him but too late. His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist and he dragged her back within his reach.

‘No …’

He hit her, a quick double blow, his knuckles smashing against her cheekbone and then the palm of his hand cracking against the other cheek, mirroring the slap she had dealt him.

‘Fuck you,’ he said.

Then he let go his hold of her, the taste of disgust thick in his mouth. There was an instant’s white print on Star’s cheek that filled with a quick tide of colour.

Star slowly turned, moving cautiously as if she was afraid that her legs would give way. She stooped, holding her back straight, to pick up her book and place it tidily on the coffee table. Then she went out, leaving the house and walking away down the suburban avenue without any particular destination in mind.

Jimmy poured himself a whisky. When he had drunk it he pulled the telephone towards him again.

‘Andrew? Jimmy. Yes, I heard.’ He listened to the snap and rumble of Andrew’s voice.

‘How much did you have to put up?’ His mouth puckered in a soundless whistle. ‘It’ll be in the papers anyway. Two hundred and fifty grand each? Bit of a nuisance if he skips the country.’

Andrew spoke again and Jimmy nodded, looking at the empty room while he listened.

‘Do you feel like a drink, later on? I thought I’d go down to the golf club. No? All right. Saturday, then.’

After Andrew had rung off Jimmy poured himself a second measure, and drank it down straight.

Star found herself walking along the path beside the river. The start of the summer had brought out the first tourists, and even in the intermittent rain there were pairs of them strolling under the snaky fronds of the willow trees. They were mostly elderly couples, filling in the interval between exploration of the cathedral and the hotel dinner. She passed them in her solitude with her head averted, eyes on the water, conscious of the bruises beginning to discolour her face. The wind was licking the surface of the river into glittering silver menisci.

The vista of old stone and water meadow opposite and the low hills in the distance had always pleased her, and numerous other corners and recesses of the city that had been rubbed and rounded by the passage of time, like stones on a beach, pleased her in the same way. It gave Star satisfaction and a sense of peace to have her small daily itinerary defined and contained by these medieval boundaries. She was thinking as she walked that it was such simple things that had kept her in Grafton, and her preference for order and routine over the risk of the unknown that had prevented her from leaving it.

But now she resolved as she threaded her way between the tourists and the flags of the willow branches that there would have to be a time to leave. She did not love her husband any more, if she had ever loved him. It was not even the acceptance of that truth that convinced her, but the recognition that this evening had provided a finishing point, a definitive break in the slow decline of her marriage. There could be no reversal or cosmetic redefinition.

Star began to make her plans. She walked for a long way, following the wide sweep of the river, until Grafton dropped out of sight behind her.

In the evening, twelve hours after his arrest, Darcy was driven home by his solicitor. Hannah, Cathy and Barney had been waiting in a tense huddle in the drawing room, but when they heard the car they stood in unison and hurried into the hallway, not knowing what they should expect. When the car drew up on the gravel sweep in front of the house, two of the pressmen who had watched the day’s traffic to and from the front door jumped from the garden seat where they had been smoking and talking and ran towards it. Darcy emerged from the passenger seat.

Hannah and his children heard him from within the safety of the house.

‘I have no comment to make. This is private property, and you will remove yourselves from it immediately. Either that or I will have you removed.’

Tim McIntyre, the solicitor, hurried in his wake. ‘Mr Clegg told you. He has no comment to make.’

Darcy swept him into the house, slamming the door behind them.

‘Have those rodents been out there all day?’

He was shouting, and he seemed to have swelled again to fill the confines of his dark suit. It was as if leaking air had been pumped back into him, smoothing out the creases in his flesh and puffing away the dark patches in his face. Hannah and the two children glanced at each other, startled and hopeful.

‘Are you all right?’ Hannah began.

‘Of course I am,’ Darcy insisted. ‘Were you afraid I wouldn’t be?’

His solicitor nodded in confirmation as Darcy shepherded them into the drawing room. ‘Bail was granted without too much difficulty. It took a little time to arrange the formalities, as it often does in these cases.’

Darcy stood with his arm around Cathy’s shoulders, surveying the room, once more the host and master.

‘Hannah, we need a drink. Two or three drinks, after the day we’ve had in that place. Tim’s done a good job. Everything is going to be fine.’

In the furnished flat that he was renting from the hospital, Michael waited for Hannah.

The flat was in an annexe to the main building that also housed the nurses’ residence, and it was usually occupied by medical families new to the area while they searched for a permanent home. When he had heard that it was temporarily available it had seemed the answer to his problems, but now that he had moved into it Michael was less sure. The flat occupied an uncomfortable middle ground, neither part of the hospital nor completely separate from it. The kitchen windows looked out on the car park and a set of blue and white signs pointing the way to the X-ray and obstetric departments. The bedroom and living room windows faced the other way, on to a grassy area where groups of student nurses sat in the June evenings with their coffee mugs and ring-binders of revision notes.