Part 3 (1/2)

It had been no part of Rhoda's plan to s.e.xually arouse Simon. The word 'l.u.s.t' didn't occur to her - or to him. 's.e.xually arouse' might be the same thing, but it sounded better. She had to accept the fact that he was s.e.xually aroused and that the reaction was natural. She had been a fool not to antic.i.p.ate it. He'd had an erection, after all, that night when he was p.i.s.sed and she'd put him to bed. Now, quite sober, his masculinity was being an awful nuisance to him, and a blus.h.i.+ng embarra.s.sment because most of the time he couldn't hide it. Amused, she had thought of Kester-Evans. What would he have counselled? Cold showers? Physical exercise? Withdrawal from the scene of temptation?

She could hear Simon showering in the bathroom every morning - not a cold one, though. When she went in later for her bath, the window was steamed over and the towel rail blazing hot. As for exercise: he mooched. A stroll around the garden. A short walk to the dairy for milk. He didn't even go out in his car. Just looked at it as if he was rather pleased he had it - a handsome piece of machinery. And he looked at her. Differently. When the young fall in love there is a degree of pain. Rhoda, carefully avoiding the word 'love', felt her conscience kick. She tried to subdue it. A few words to Peter, inside her head, helped. ”I haven't enticed Simon. Been careful not to. I saw to the domestic arrangements. They're okay. You couldn't fault them.

I sleep in Lisa's studio, on her couch, with her Welsh blanket on top of me. It smells of whatever perfume she used. Sweet. She wasn't sweet, was she? But that's the way she smelled. Simon wanted me to have the guest bedroom, next to his. I told him, no. I needed to work late. And I do. And I have. If you and Lisa were able to walk in on me, Peter, you'd erupt together in one great explosion of rage. I sometimes lie in her bed and think of a great h.e.l.lish thundercloud of rage. And it excites me. Pleases me. Makes me more sure that what I'm doing must be done. Digging away for the truth, all the time.

”But Simon ... What do I do about Simon? I'm not here to hurt him.”

Simon, aware of a cooling in a relations.h.i.+p that, on her part, had never been very warm, was mutely miserable. He had shared his home with this gut-churning, odd, beautiful, vixen-eyed woman for six days, and in that time he had pushed himself up to some sort of mountain peak, because she was up there, too. Mountain peaks are lonely places when the other person doesn't want you. You might get the message that she's rejecting you but you only get it in your brain. Your brain won't transmit it to the rest of you. Your body doesn't get it. Your body gives you h.e.l.l. You can't even eat - well, you can't eat much.

He derived some comfort from the fact that she spent time cooking the evening meal for them both, doing the best she could with the contents of the deep-freeze and showing concern about his likes and dislikes. ”If you don't like chicken cha.s.seur, or whatever ridiculous name it's called, you should have said.” ”I do like it.” ”Eat it, then.” ”I have - most of it.” ”Not enough. You're a growing boy, for G.o.d's sake.” ”For G.o.d's sake, I'm b.l.o.o.d.y eighteen.” A rueful smile from her: ”Sorry. lt's just that I'm bothered about you. It's not all that long since the funeral and ...” she shrugged, ”well, I think I know what you must be feeling. It takes time for everything to be normal again. I'll be gone soon - just a few more days - and then you'll have the place to yourself.”

He looked at her, stricken. ”A few more days?” The future was a horrid abyss, a dark crater on his mountain top. He couldn't bear it.

She collected up the plates and emptied the remains of his meal into the pedal-bin. ”There's ice-cream and cherry tart.”

He winced.

”What, then? What would you like?”

A tumblerful of neat whisky. An injection of any mind-numbing drug. ”Nothing.”

She felt extremely irritated but kept her voice level. ”I may have to stay a while longer - perhaps another week.” Now would the silly boy have some pudding?

He agreed he would - just a little.

Simon's apparent indifference to what she was doing up in his mother's studio, day after day, was a bonus she hadn't expected when she'd moved in. She'd hidden the diaries in a half-used box of typing paper and shoved it under the couch in case he walked in on her and picked one of them up. It didn't matter if he saw the ma.n.u.scripts, they wouldn't hurt him, and she was working on them legitimately; a few pages of boring comment, turned out now and then in case he asked about progress. She'd asked him if he'd ever gone through his mother's papers - anything she might have written - or any letters - or even postcards that she might have received. ”When someone dies, there's usually correspondence to be got rid of. If you haven't done that, could you let me have a quick glance? There might be something relevant to the profile I'm writing. Editors like the human touch.” He said there weren't any letters. His mother never kept them. And his father didn't either. ”What about art, then? Most of her sketches relate to her work. Did she never do sketches of her friends?” The possibility obviously surprised him. ”No, she never painted living people.” Her art, he explained, was other people's art - re-done. Though she might have some sketch books she'd put away somewhere. He didn't know. He'd never asked. Art and literature -if writing books about art was literature - weren't his 'thing'. Any more than forensic pathology was. ”We don't necessarily like what our parents like,” he'd added, his gaze lingering on her hair as if he longed to touch it.

Well, sometimes we do, she'd thought.

Why did most men like long hair?

Why had Lisa bought a wig?

The entry was irr Lisa's penultimate diary:

Bought a switch of hair in a little shop near the university. Light blonde. Divided it into two plaits. Dressed for dinner in the dark blue bust-clinging frock. Like hers. Well, almost. She's more busty than me. Let the two plaits swing forward and form a loop, then went down to Peter in the dining-room. He was decanting brandy. Nothing straight from the bottle for him. Oh, no. Good crystal. Have it. Use it. Have women. Use them, too. ”They're calling them the Rapunzel murders,” I told him, ”the Press. And what do you call your long-haired lady? Dianeme? Like Herrick?” He kept on decanting. Didn't spill a single drop. Then turned and looked at me. Eyes like ice. Smiled.

”Need another session at The Mount with Donaldson, Lisa? Or just some stronger pills?”

The writing had trailed off there, to be resumed after a few empty pages:

Dianeme, in Herrick's poem, had ruby ear-rings. If the poor little tart in the church vault wore ear-rings, they'd be gla.s.s. What would Peter's Dianeme wear? Pearls? All they had in common was their hair. And Peter. Hands on the living. Hands on the dead.

Rhoda s.h.i.+vered and pushed the diary aside. All the murdered women had had long hair. Clare's hair had been long, too. And blonde. And who was Peter's Dianeme?

”The Mount is a rest home,” Simon told Rhoda. ”My mother went there to rest.” He had known for some years that the bland description was misleading but preferred it to the truth. ”Why can't she rest in her own bed at home?” he had asked his father during one of the school holidays when he was about eleven or so. ”Why do slimmers go to health farms,” his father had hedged, ”when they can diet just as well in their own kitchens?” It was no answer and he'd tried to provide his own. ”To resist temptation.” His father had smiled and rumpled his hair in a rough gesture of affection. ”Temptation comes in many guises, Simon. Bed and food probably top the list. Stop worrying about your mother. Steven Donaldson is an expert on mothers. Especially yours.” He had been too young then to understand the irony, but the words were clear in his mind now as he looked at Rhoda. She was a lot older than he, but no more a mother figure than his mother had been. Why this thought should occur to him, he didn't know. She had come into the small book-lined room off the hall which his father had used as his study and found him reading a Rider Haggard, or rather, leafing through it - the t.i.tle She had appealed. Was there any poetry on the shelves? Rhoda wanted to know. Anything by Herrick, for instance? He'd found a Golden Treasury and given it to her. She'd sat in silence, turning the pages, and then discovered whatever she was looking for. ”Ah,” she said. ”Dianeme. So that's where she got it.” ”Got what?” ”It doesn't matter. Just a reference.”

He noticed she had washed her hair for the second time that day. One of the green guest towels was draped over the shoulders of her white sweats.h.i.+rt. Perhaps her hair had got dusty when she had been in the attic. He had heard her pulling down the Slingsby ladder but had resisted following her. There was nothing of interest up there. Just suitcases. Perhaps one of the smaller ones had his mother's name on it and the address of The Mount, though it seemed unlikely. The Mount, after all, was local, just a few minutes away by car. He asked her how she knew about it.

She was evasive. ”Well, it does rather loom over the village - it's not the sort of place you can ignore. Someone may have mentioned it to me. I can't remember. What's the name of the man who runs it?”

”Donaldson - he's the medical superintendent.” ”A colleague of your father's? Or a friend, perhaps?” Simon wasn't sure that either word had applied to his father's relations.h.i.+p with Donaldson. Both men were doctors but colleagues implied a shared speciality - psychiatry was far removed from pathology. As for friends.h.i.+p ... he had only been in their company a few times and they had been coldly polite. Donaldson and his mother - that was different. Professionalism plus what ... ? He looked thoughtfully at Rhoda. Plus ... that? No, it couldn't have been. Donaldson was old -at least fifty.

He wasn't sure how to answer the question, but managed to get near the truth. ”Doctor Donaldson has mostly acquaintances. Everyone knows him. I don't know if he visits much socially, but he encourages visits to The Mount. He has Bridge parties sometimes - and musical evenings. The Maybridges and the vicar, people like that, go along. It's mainly for the patients though, those who want to attend. A way of getting them back amongst people again.” He was sorry he had used the word 'patient' and added quickly: ”Some of the villagers call it a psychiatric hospital - it isn't - it's a private nursing home. People go there to escape ... well, pressure ... a job that worries them ... or any other sort of bother. Donaldson lets them do their own thing. Nothing at all, if that's what they want. A man called Paul Creggan lives in a tepee in the grounds for a few weeks now and then, and then goes back to being an accountant - or whatever.” Creggan living in a tepee was one of the stories about Donaldson's methods that had stayed in his mind. And rea.s.sured him to some extent. At least his mother hadn't lived in a tent. On the whole she had been pretty normal.

”My mother wasn't neurotic,” he said. ”Just couldn't cope sometimes. Couldn't sleep. Got on edge. There are a lot of people like that. There was nothing wrong with her mentally. Donaldson could tell you that.”

As soon as he had spoken the words he regretted them. He didn't mind her probing here but he didn't want her to go probing there. There was no knowing what Donaldson might tell her.

”Must we keep talking about my mother?” he burst out irritably. ”Can't you understand that I'm stuck here while you spend hours upstairs? There are times when I wish you'd never started whatever it is you're doing - your article - your profile. You never talk to me. Not properly. Just ask questions. Not about me. About her. I'm a person, not a b.l.o.o.d.y cipher. I exist!”

It was petulant. But it was justified, too. How to soothe the boy, Rhoda wondered, without taking him to bed? A careful caress? A light touch of fingers on his cheek? No, his mood was too volatile. They'd be rolling around on the carpet within minutes.

She suggested that he might like to take her for a run in his car - to Bristol, perhaps?

He thought it a rotten idea. What was she proposing? To take him to the zoo - to throw peanuts at the monkeys - suck a lollipop? He wanted to go to London with her - to her flat or wherever it was she lived. He wanted to see where she ate and slept. To open her wardrobe. Feel her clothes. She was as nebulous as a mirage. As unknown as a refugee in an empty landscape. He wanted to know her. In every sense, know her.

His silence perturbed her. There was a quality of maturity in his glance now that reminded her of his father. He was a boy/man, and at this moment there was no childishness in him at all.

”I need to go in to do some shopping,” she told him briskly, ”and to get a book in one of the antiquarian book shops. One that was mentioned in your mother's ...” She broke off. His mother as a topic was taboo for a while. ”Though that's not urgent. We can have a meal somewhere. And then you can show me the sights - your favourite parts of Bristol - the modern precincts - or the historical areas - anything.”

He had no favourite parts of Bristol, though it was a pleasant enough city. He imagined the two of them trekking around like a couple of tourists and ending up in the crypt of St Nicholas's, seated at one of the long trestle tables, doing bra.s.s rubbings. Or maybe in the vault of that other place with the odd name that didn't sound C. of E. at all. The place where the tramps went at night - and where his father had been called out by the police to look at the body of a murdered girl.

He told her decisively, as his father would have told her, that he would rather take her to Gloucester. ”You can shop there.”

For a while the man was in the ascendancy and she didn't argue.

A visit of condolence, Donaldson believed, was obligatory. He had put it off as long as possible and was relieved not to find Simon in. The possibility that he might be down in the orchard, in the summerhouse, occurred to him but he preferred not to look. He went back to his car and wrote a note on one of his address cards: ”Sorry to have missed you. If there is anything I can do, then please call on me.” It looked curt but there wasn't room for more. He hesitated before putting the card through the letterbox. He had written a letter of sympathy a couple of weeks ago - the usual words about grief - loss - fond memory and so on-but it had seemed shallow and conventional - a parroting of emotions and he had torn it up. He knew how he felt. How Lisa's son felt was no business of his - professionally or any other way. There had been too much involvement in the past. Clinical detachment where Lisa had been concerned had been a sick joke. Detachment from her son was prerequisite to a return to normal life. Or as normal as any life can be.

”Happy insanity,” one of his patients had joked, ”is vastly preferable to being sadly sane. How dare you cure me? I don't want to go home.”

Quite a lot of them didn't.

Including Lisa.

”Discretion,” he reminded his staff from time to time, ”is as vital as good nursing. The patients must trust you. Encourage them to talk, talking is therapeutic, then forget what they've told you, unless it's relevant. If it is, tell me.” He could have said, more simply, ”Don't gossip,” but that would have been insulting. On the whole, he had what he thought of as a good team. They batted on an easy wicket and were well paid. The non-professional staff, who kept the place clean and saw to the other domestic ch.o.r.es, tended to come and go. None was local. The cook, Mrs Mackay, a taciturn Scotswoman, had been with him eight years, which was exceptional. She had recently bought a cottage on the outskirts of the village and with luck would remain up to retirement age. Or perhaps beyond. ”If music is the food of love,” a grateful patient had commented, ”and the converse is equally true, then she plays one h.e.l.l of a good sonata with her Grampian roast.” She wasn't at all bad at more exotic dishes either, but she refused to give them fancy names. French and Italian words describing anything she cooked were taboo. Bouillabaisse appeared on her menu as fish soup, and a frica.s.see as stewed mince. Caviare, served occasionally as a starter, was listed as fish roes. New patients, expecting the worst and sunk in gloom at the prospect of a terrible meal, were pleasantly surprised. Shock therapy by a Cordon Bleu electrified their tastebuds. Only the anorexic were slow to respond.

And Paul Creggan.