Distant Voices Page 44

  ‘Ellis. Let’s see. Here we are. This must be him. I’ll try.’

  He punched out the number slowly and deliberately as he always did, with the action of a seasoned executive.

  ‘Hello, is Fred Ellis there? What? Mr Justice Ellis? Oh no. I’m sorry, must be the wrong man.’ He hung up swiftly and glanced at his wife rather sheepishly. ‘Too much wallop,’ he commented dryly.

  It was as they were at last climbing into bed that the phone rang. Meg glanced at her watch. It was nearly midnight.

  ‘You go.’ Denzil pulled the sheet up to his chin. ‘If it’s for me I’m out.’

  She gave him a withering look and padded barefoot into the sitting room, groping for the switch of the table lamp as she picked up the phone.

  ‘Yes, who is it?’ She tried to sound as though she’d just been woken up – an instinctive ploy to make the caller feel guilty. It didn’t work. It was her sister. ‘Jill! do you know what time it is? Yes I know I called Mummy. No, Denzil isn’t in trouble. He just needs a … what?’

  She gripped the receiver more tightly. ‘You know one? Who?’

  She listened intently as Jill explained a tenuous but definitely real line of contact and reached excitedly for her diary.

  ‘But are you sure he knows he owes Don a favour?’ she asked slowly as she wrote. Don was her brother-in-law.

  She was reassured and a few minutes later was hurrying back to the bedroom.

  She eyed her husband’s recumbent and snoring form. ‘Jill and Don have asked us to go for drinks on Thursday,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘They’ve got a QC lined up for you.’

  She was answered by a snort.

  At nine the next morning her mother was on the phone again. This time she was excited. She had obviously spent the night in deep communion with her address book.

  ‘I’ve just remembered, darling,’ she announced before Meg could draw breath. ‘Your brother’s godmother’s husband was a QC. I think he’s retired, but that won’t matter will it? It’s just as good, I’m sure. I’ve asked them over for tomorrow. Make sure you come early then Denzil will have plenty of time to talk to him …’

  Mary called back at ten forty-five. ‘Meg. You know, I thought about what you said yesterday and it did seem a super excuse to call Roland. He remembered me, and he sounds fabulous – a very rich sort of voice, I thought –’ there was a short pause on the line while she licked her lips. ‘And guess what? He’s just been made a QC. So everything’s perfect. He’s agreed to come to have drinks with us Friday at six. All right? Of course I didn’t tell him about Denzil wanting to speak to him, I mean how could I? I’m sure it’s unethical or something, but you’ll have to work that out …’

  Meg put down the phone and stared at her diary. No one could say she hadn’t tried. Three QCs, three days running!

  She gave a little secret smile and picking up the phone dialled Denzil’s work number. It was a while before he came on the line, but when he did he sounded breathless.

  ‘Meg? The most fantastic news!’

  She stiffened suspiciously. ‘Den, you haven’t found a QC have you?’

  ‘QC? What are you talking about? Good Lord, no, forget all that. Darling, I decided to take the bull by the horns and I went and saw the MD himself this morning and asked for a transfer. And guess what. He’s agreed. No questions, no arguments. He said because of my seniority I can have the next posting there and one is coming up in about three months’ time. It was as simple as that.’

  As simple as that? She glanced down at her diary.

  Wednesday:Mummy’s QC – 7.30

  Thursday:Jill’s QC – 8.30

  Friday:Mary’s QC – 6.00

  She closed her eyes and taking a deep breath began to count slowly to ten.

  When the phone rang again a little while later she automatically reached for her diary. There was only Saturday left. This week.

  ‘Meg dear? It’s Aunt Hattie. Your mother tells me you’re anxious to find the name of a Queen’s Counsel. Well, I happen to know one. He’s a most delicious young man …’

  I wonder how many QCs there are, Meg thought to herself idly as she listened, and reaching for her pen she began to doodle round the tiny picture of the moon which appeared on the page heralding the start of the following month.

  Catherine’s Cat

  They were there again. The eyes. High up on top of the old-fashioned wardrobe in the corner of her room. Gleaming in the dark. Golden. Elliptical.

  Of course, she knew they were really the locks on the suitcase, catching the reflection from the street lamp outside her window, but sometimes in the long sleepless nights as her aching lids refused to stay shut she would half focus on them and know that up there there lurked a big hungry cat.

  With a shiver she pulled the duvet up over her mouth and nose leaving only her eyes exposed, eyes which refused to close. Soon she would hear her mother and father coming up to bed; the footsteps on the stairs, the quiet talking, sometimes laughter – always discreet, always thoughtful, not wanting to wake her up. It was reassuring, hearing them there, sensing them close, just across the landing. She didn’t like it when she was upstairs by herself. It was frightening; lonely.

  She heard their bedroom door close. In a few minutes it would open again and one of them would go into the bathroom. Sometimes they would run the bath before they shut the door, going backwards and forwards between the two rooms and sometimes, very faintly, she could smell the sweet lavender of her mother’s bath oil. It comforted her to think that they were there so close. Within call if something awful should really happen. Her eyes went quickly from the thin bright line down the side of her bedroom door to the top of the wardrobe again.

  It was still there, the sleepy cat; watching. Tonight it seemed more alert than usual; the eyes bigger. She glanced hastily out of the window, hardly daring to move her head lest she draw attention to herself, and saw the light outside in the street. It too seemed brighter. It was blue instead of a softer yellow. Perhaps they had changed the bulb. She looked back at the cat and heard a soft unmistakable growl.

  Her heart thudding with fear she shrank back into the bed, trying to slip out of sight, trying to shrink herself to nothing. She didn’t dare hide completely though. If she stopped watching it might move – leap down from its high perch and attack.

  It had never done it yet but there was always a first time for everything – her father had told her that.

  She could hear its tail swishing now – a rhythmic brushing against the wood of the wardrobe door and then in the silence she heard the slight rasping as it flexed its claws.

  ‘Mummy –’ Her call was so quiet it was no more than a whisper. She was too afraid it would hear her. ‘Mummy, can you come here.’

  If she called as her mother came out of the bathroom she might hear; might come straightaway, but then supposing the cat leapt and landed on her mother?

  She ducked even further out of sight, not daring to call out again, her eyes red with staring.

  ‘Frances? Come on. What are you doing in there? Did you fall asleep in the bath?’ Her father’s sudden call was shockingly loud. She tensed, waiting for the animal to jump, but it didn’t move.

  Couldn’t move, she reminded herself sternly. It was after all a suitcase. Just a suitcase.

  ‘Frances?’ His voice was sharper, somehow more anxious. ‘Are you all right?’

  She held her breath.

  Her father’s footsteps padded across the landing and she heard the bathroom door open. ‘Frances!’ His call was peremptory and a little afraid. ‘Frances!’ It was louder again. He had come back out onto the landing. It sounded as if he were just outside her door. ‘Frances!’ The word was quieter yet louder as though he were speaking with his lips to her keyhole, yet not wanting to awaken her. Her eyes went up automatically to the cat. It watched sleepily, not moving.

  ‘Frances!’ It was a whisper this time but her door was opening – the crack of light widening cautiously
as it pushed with a slight shushing sound across the pile of the carpet. The cat’s eyes disappeared.

  ‘Frances, are you in there?’

  ‘Daddy?’ Catherine sat up. ‘Daddy, what’s wrong?’

  For a moment he hesitated then he groped for the light switch by the door. In the sudden brightness Catherine screwed up her eyes, blinking.

  ‘I thought Mummy was in here,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m sorry, pudding. I didn’t mean to wake you.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep.’ Catherine clutched her duvet more tightly.

  ‘No.’ He sounded suddenly bleak.

  She stared at him. He was wrapped in his dark-blue dressing gown and his legs and feet were bare. She glanced at his legs and then averted her eyes. They were very white with black hairs growing on them. ‘Where’s Mummy gone?’ she asked.

  He gave a small tight smile, his hand going back to the light switch.

  ‘Downstairs. I expect she’s gone to make us some cocoa. Back to sleep now, pudding. God bless. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  The light clicked off and the door closed. The room was suddenly in total darkness. She froze, not daring to move.

  The cat opened its eyes.

  ‘Frances? Where are you, darling?’ She heard her father’s voice as he ran downstairs; the soft thump of his bare feet on each step. ‘Frances!’ The anxiety was real now, sharp, although fainter. ‘Oh God, please Frances, no. I can’t live without you.’

  Catherine’s fists were knotted into the fabric of the duvet cover. She pressed her face into it, where it draped across her knees, to stop the scalding tears before they ran down her cheeks.

  The house was silent. In the bed she began slowly to rock backwards and forwards in her misery, her loneliness and terror like an ice wall around her.

  On the wardrobe the cat moved slightly. A paw flexed on the fretted wooden gallery above the doors and a deep groove appeared in the richness of the wood.

  ‘Frances! Frances, my darling, I love you! Don’t you see. I love you!’

  Catherine stiffened. The voice was very loud once more, clear in the stillness of the night. It came not from the house but from outside her window. For a moment she couldn’t move, then she pushed back the duvet and slid out of bed, running to stare out, shocked and terrified to see her father, still in his dressing gown and bare feet, standing in the middle of the road. Behind him the garden gate swung open, the path clear in the light of the street lamp. The road in both directions was completely empty. His hair was tousled and his face, clearly visible in the blue cold light, contorted with pain.

  Her fingers clutched at the window sill so tightly her hands were white and bloodless; her attention was focused so hard on her father she did not hear the thud as the cat leapt down and stood for a moment on the carpet near her bed. It regarded the child’s thin shoulders with an air of detached, almost academic interest and then it leapt onto the bed. Turning round once it settled down, the long tail brushing the floor on one side, a huge velvet paw casually draped over the other. It watched her sleepily, its eyes slowly closing, its nose resting comfortably on the soft black fur of a forepaw.

  Catherine swallowed hard, trying not to cry, empathising with her father’s pain and not able to articulate her own.

  ‘Mummy?’ The whisper was strangled.

  After several minutes he turned and walked back towards the house. She could see his bare feet on the gritty tarmac of the road in the lamp light and she stared fascinated by this terrible abnormality in a life which had seemed so sane and ordered for every day of her existence.

  He came through the gate and left it open as he walked slowly back towards the house. As he reached the front door, so like the others in the suburban avenue with its blue and green stained-glass flowers let into the panel above the letter box, he passed out of her sight.

  Catherine didn’t move. She heard him close the front door and knew with some part of herself that he was leaning against it, defeated, and sobbing silently.

  She didn’t dare move. Her world had crumbled. The love and security with which she had been surrounded all her life had gone. Reality was the loneliness of the darkened bedroom, the hungry angry cat lying on the wardrobe waiting to pounce.

  She stared down the road with eyes blinded by tears. It was still empty.

  ‘Daddy?’ Her lips framed the word but she knew he couldn’t come. She was no longer the centre of his world; she was no longer the centre of any world. He had forgotten her.

  When she at last turned from the window, cold and stiff, trembling in every limb, she did not even look at the wardrobe; nor did she notice the shadow-like black shape taking up so much room on the end of her bed. Crawling under the pillows she burrowed out of sight and began to sob again. It was only as she was falling asleep that, stretching out a little, she felt the solid weight on the duvet near her feet and, taking comfort from the warmth, without further conscious thought, snuggled down against it.

  She did not know how long she had been asleep when she was awakened by the sound of a door banging. She tensed, her eyes, swollen by crying, still tightly shut.

  ‘Frances?’ Her father’s voice in the distance was croaky with exhaustion.

  Catherine crept out of bed and went to the door. Pulling it open she peered out. The lights upstairs were all on. From where she stood she could see the top of the stairs and the banister around the head of the stairwell close to the bathroom door. In the bathroom the water for her mother’s bath had long ago gone cold. Only a slow monotonous drip from one of the taps broke the silence.

  ‘Frances? You came back?’

  Behind her only a large oval indentation and a few black hairs on Catherine’s bed cover showed where the cat had lain.

  ‘I couldn’t do it, Freddie.’ Her mother’s voice was barely audible.

  Catherine crept across the landing and crouched down, peering through the banister rails. Her mother was standing just inside the front door, her hair wet with rain. When had it started raining? She was dressed in her old jeans with a heavy blue sweater and her red woollen jacket that Catherine liked to dress up in sometimes because on her it came down to the ground. Her mother’s face was white and strained – it was to Catherine’s shocked eyes no longer the face of the beautiful young princess-like figure who had figured in so many of the child’s fantasy games, but that of an old ugly woman.

  ‘I’m sorry for all the things I said.’ Frances hadn’t moved any further into the hall. Her hands were pushed down into the pockets of the jacket and her shoulders were hunched defensively. ‘It was hateful of me.’

  ‘They were true.’ Freddie was sitting on the stairs with his back to Catherine and he had not stood up. He looked defeated. They were both, Catherine realised suddenly, frightened. She bit her lip. Her world had started to spin again; parents are never afraid.

  ‘I am boring. I am stuck in a rut. You could have done much better than me. Everyone always thought that.’

  ‘No!’ Frances was shaking her head. ‘No, Freddie –’

  ‘Yes!’ He buried his face in his hands. ‘And I am too old for you. I always knew it. But I loved – love – you so much.’ He looked up.

  Catherine chewed her lip. She pressed her face closer to the bars. She could feel her father’s pain; his absolute despair. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze went to her mother. For the first time in her life she was seeing her as a separate thing – a frightening, unpredictable stranger. She studied her mother’s face with hostile intensity, noting the pale, unmade-up skin, the huge shadowed eyes with mud-coloured circles under the lower lids, the thin almost paper-coloured lips, usually so joyously scarlet and full, and she registered an infinitesimal shiver of dislike. Frances’s hair was hanging round her shoulders in rats’ tails, dripping down her neck and she pushed it away with cold near-lifeless fingers. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs and have a bath.’ Her voice was lacklustre and defeated.

  ‘Why did you come back?’ Freddie was still sitting on the stai
rs. To go up to the bathroom she would have to climb over him.

  She stood still, her hands spread in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘Wouldn’t he have you?’ Freddie’s voice was suddenly harsh.

  Her eyes went to his and Catherine noted dispassionately that they were now brimming with tears. ‘I never reached his house.’

  There was a long silence. Freddie didn’t seem to know what to say. His shoulders had slumped as he sat there below her and Catherine saw the sharp angles of his bones beneath the blue towelling of his robe. Above the collar his neck rose, thin and defenceless, and above that his tousled hair. As if he could feel his daughter’s gaze he ran distracted fingers through it and then sank his head once more into his hands. ‘You could still go.’

  She drew in her breath sharply. ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘No.’ He raised his head wearily. ‘No of course I don’t want you to, but I don’t want you to stay if you’re unhappy and it’s all over between us.’

  ‘It’s not all over, Freddie. It was never there.’ She turned back towards the front door and put her hand on the latch. For a moment it stayed there, then it slid away. Frances leaned forward, her forehead resting against the leaded panes of coloured glass, her hands hanging limply at her sides. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ It was a child-like call for help.

  ‘Stay. Please stay. Think of Catherine.’

  Catherine’s grip tightened on the banister rails until her hands hurt.

  Frances turned wearily. ‘Catherine wouldn’t even miss me. She’s always loved you best.’

  Freddie didn’t say anything for a moment, then he shrugged. ‘That’s silly. She loves both of us.’

  ‘No.’ Frances shook her head violently. ‘No. She’s never loved me. She’s a cold uncaring child. I sometimes can’t believe I even gave birth to her. She’d be much happier if I weren’t here. Then she could have you all to herself.’

  ‘Frances!’ His voice was stronger suddenly. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’