The Copper Peacock Read online

  ‘Fifteen pounds of flesh,’ said Anna. Griselda had been a large heavy cat.

  ‘OK, fifteen pounds. She’s had that, she’s had her revenge, it hasn’t actually caused you any grief, you’ll just have to make up some story for your mother.’

  Anna’s mother was upset but nowhere near as upset as Maria Jakob had been over the death of Melusina. To avoid too much fuss, Anna had gone further than she intended, told her mother that she had seen Griselda’s corpse and talked to the offending motorist who had been very distressed. A month or so later Anna’s mother got a kitten, a grey tabby torn kitten, who was very affectionate from the start, sat on her lap, purred loudly when stroked and snuggled up in her arms, though Anna was sure her mother had not stopped having baths or using perfume. So much for the Jakob theories.

  Nearly a year had gone by before she again drove down the road where Maria Jakob’s house was. She had not intended to go that way. Directions had been given her to a smallholding where they sold early strawberries on a roadside stall but she must have missed her way, taken a wrong turning and come out here.

  If Maria Jakob’s car had been parked in the front she would not have stopped. There was no garage for it to be in, it was not outside, therefore the cat woman must be out. Anna thought of the funeral she had not been to, she had often thought about it, the strange people and strange cats who had attended it.

  In each of the bay windows sat a cat, a tortoiseshell and a brown tabby. The black cat was eyeing her from upstairs. Anna did not go to the front door but round the back. There, among the long grass, as she had expected, were four graves instead of three, four wooden crosses and on the fourth was printed in black gloss paint: Melusina, the Queen of the Cats, murdered in her sixth year. RIP.

  That ‘murdered’ did not please Anna. It brought back all the resentment at unjust accusations of eleven months before. She felt much older, she felt wiser. One thing was certain, ethics or no ethics, if she ever ran over a cat again she’d drive on, the last thing she’d do was go and confess.

  She came round the side of the house and looked in at the bay window. If the tortoiseshell had still been on the windowsill she probably would not have looked in, but the tortoiseshell had removed itself to the hearthrug.

  A white cat and the marmalade and white lay curled up side by side in an armchair. The portrait of Melusina hung above the fireplace and this year’s cat calendar was up on the left-hand wall. Light gleamed on the china cats’ gilt whiskers and between them, in the empty space that was no longer vacant, sat Griselda.

  Griselda was sitting in the queen’s place in the middle of the mantelpiece. She sat in the sphynx position with her eyes closed. Anna tapped on the glass and Griselda opened her eyes, stared with cold indifference and closed them again.

  The queen is dead, long live the queen!

  Dying Happy

  I was sitting by his bedside. He had a pure white room all to himself.

  ‘This place reminds me of something that happened to a friend of mine.’

  ‘What friend?’ I said.

  ‘You didn’t know him. He’s dead now anyway. Or dead to all intents and purposes.’ He gave me a sly sideways look. It was a look that dared me to ask what the last remark meant. I didn’t ask and he said, ‘I’ll tell you about him.’ He put his head back on the pillow and looked at the white ceiling. ‘A long time ago, twenty years at least, he had a relationship with this woman.’

  I had to interrupt. ‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘I have a relationship with you. Come to that, I have a relationship with the milkman.’

  ‘Well, an affair then. I hate the word too. I picked it up from Miriam.’ Miriam was his wife. ‘An affair,’ he said. ‘A love passage. He was married of course. But he was in love with this woman, about as much in love as anyone can be, I gather. Fathoms deep. He was a very romantic man. He didn’t tell his wife but of course she found out and put a stop to it.’

  ‘What was her name?’ I said.

  ‘The girl friend? Susanna. Her name was Susanna. She wasn’t any younger than his wife or better-looking or cleverer or anything. And none of them were young, you know. Even then, at the time, they weren’t young. I said he put a stop to it but that was only for a while. They started up again in secret and this time when the wife found out Susanna herself stopped it. She said it wasn’t fair to any of them and she didn’t answer his phone calls or his letters or anything and after a while it sort of petered out as these things do. Anyway, this was all of twenty years ago, as I said.

  ‘His wife would bring up Susanna’s name every time they disagreed. You can imagine. And he wasn’t above comparing his wife unfavourably with Susanna if she annoyed him. But after a time they stopped mentioning her, though my friend never stopped thinking about her. He said that never a day passed without him thinking of her. And she came into his dreams. He got to look forward to those dreams because he said at least that way he got to see her sometimes.’

  ‘The poor devil,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, well, he was romantic.’

  It was nearly as white outside as in. There was snow on the ground and lumps of snow on the tree branches. He turned his face to the dazzling snow, screwing up his eyes. ‘He got some awful thing the matter with him. I’m speaking about the present day now more or less. They gave him a limited time to live, a matter of months, you know how they won’t commit themselves. He got it into his head he had to see Susanna before he died. He had to see her, he could die happy or at least contented if he could see her.’

  ‘Did he know where she was?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes, he knew. You have to understand that though they never spoke of her, he and his wife, he knew all about her, everything that had happened to her. He knew she had moved and that she had married. It was an agony to him when she married. He knew the day and the hour and he sat watching the clock. Her husband died and he tried not to rejoice. He sent anonymous flowers, not for her dead husband but to her. That was the only contact, if contact it can be called, between them in all those years. Now to see her again was an obsession with him. He dreamed of it, he thought of nothing else.

  ‘His wife had said she’d do anything for him, anything he wanted she’d try to get him. Get me Susanna, he said. I want to see Susanna before I die. Well, that wasn’t at all what she’d meant by anything he wanted. You can imagine. She shouted and wept and said if Susanna came there – he was at home then, he went into hospital later – if Susanna came, she’d kill her. Oh, grow up, he said. The way you dramatise everything. We’re all old now, we can’t do anything. Look at me, be reasonable, why d’you grudge me a bit of happiness? I won’t trouble you for long.

  ‘You’re my husband, she said, you’re mine. It’s me you ought to want to see. God knows I see you every minute of every day, he said. I’ll pull the phone wires out of the wall, she said. If you write to her I won’t post the letter, I’ll burn any letter you write to her. And if you get her here, I’ll kill her. I’ll hit her over the head like I would a burglar if I caught him in my house.’

  He was staring hard at me now and breathing rather quickly. The white glare on his face made him look like death.

  ‘Take it easy,’ I said.

  ‘I will. I am.’ He managed a grin. ‘It wasn’t only his wife he saw. The neighbours used to come in. And his friends from the old days. He got one of them to post the letter. And Susanna answered by return of post. There was no question of his wife keeping the letter from him, she couldn’t tell who his letters were from. That letter made him so happy, he had waited twenty years for it, he felt he could have died he was so happy. And maybe it would have been for the best if he had. Maybe it would.

  ‘He phoned her, he spoke to her, they fixed a time for Susanna to come. Hearing her voice was another kind of ecstasy. He told his wife when she was coming and said the best thing would be for her to go out. I’ll kill her before she walks through that door, his wife said. I don’t think I said they’d never met, did I, Susanna and
his wife? Well, they never had, never even heard each other’s voice on the phone. Of course he didn’t believe his wife would kill her. I mean, would you? No one would. He didn’t even believe she’d do Susanna an injury.’

  ‘What happened when Susanna came?’ I said.

  The hospice was set in parkland. Cedar trees stood very black and ragged against the snow. You could see visitors’ cars approach from the time they entered the distant gate. He was watching a car worm its way along the road between the snow banks.

  ‘He heard her come to the door and he waited. It was ages before she came up. And when she did his wife was with her. Susanna was changed but he didn’t mind about that and they were all changed. How could it be otherwise? She didn’t touch him, she didn’t even touch his hand. She and his wife sat there talking across him. They talked about the books they read and knitting and painting in water colours and golf – he’d never realised they had so much in common. They even looked alike. After a while they went downstairs. Susanna came again next day but she only looked in on him for two minutes. She and his wife had dinner together downstairs and watched the gardening programme on television. The day after that he had to go into hospital.’

  ‘This friend,’ I said, ‘it was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It always is,’ I said. ‘And I suppose I posted that letter for you.’

  He nodded, looking very tired now. The door opened and two women came in, big florid Miriam with a fur hat on her red hair and a fur coat that made her look like a marmalade cat and big zip-up boots, and another one like a tortoiseshell cat, as furry and booted but a fraction taller. Miriam introduced me.

  ‘We mustn’t stay long, darling. We’re learning Italian and we’ve got our lesson at two. We’re planning on Rome together for Easter so there’s no time to waste. Give him the chocolates, Susanna, and then we must rush. If the snow clears tomorrow we’ll be on the golf course all weekend, so I don’t suppose we’ll see you again till Monday.’

  The Copper Peacock

  Peter Seeburg lived in a flat without a kitchen.

  ‘Kitchens make you fat,’ he said.

  Bernard asked if that was one of the principles of the Seeburg Diet which Peter was going to the United States to promote. Peter smiled.

  ‘All one needs’, he said, ‘is an electric kettle in the bathroom and a fridge somewhere else.’ He added rather obscurely, ‘Eating out keeps you thin because it is so expensive.’

  He was lending the flat to Bernard while he was in America. They walked around it and Peter explained how things worked. The place was very clean. ‘A woman comes in three times a week. Her name’s Judy. She won’t get in your way.’

  ‘Do I have to have her?’

  ‘Oh dear yes, you do. If I get rid of her for three months I’ll never get her back again and I can’t do with that.’

  He would have to put up with it, Bernard supposed. Peter’s kindness in lending him the flat, rent-free, to write his new biography in was something he still found overwhelming. It was quiet here – was this the only street in west London not being renovated, not a noisy jumble of scaffolding and skips? No sounds of music penetrated the ceilings. The other tenants in the block did not, apparently, spend their mornings doing homework for their carpentry courses. The windows gave on to plane trees and Regency façades.

  ‘She’s very efficient. She’ll probably wash your clothes if you leave them lying about. But you won’t be sleeping here, will you?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Bernard.

  As it was he felt guilty about leaving Ann alone all day with the children. But it was useless to attempt working at home with a two-year-old and a three-year-old under the same roof with him. Memories were vivid of Jonathan climbing on his shoulders and Jeremy trying out felt-tipped pens on his notes while he was last correcting page proofs. Still, he would be back with them in the evenings. He would have to make up for everything to Ann in the evenings.

  ‘There’s no question of my sleeping here,’ he said to Peter as if he hadn’t heard him the first time.

  Peter gave him the keys. On Monday morning he was flying to Los Angeles, the first leg of his tour. Bernard arrived in a taxi two hours after he left, bringing with him two very large bags full of books. The biography he was embarking on was the life of a rather obscure Edwardian poet. His last book had been the life of a rather obscure Victorian diarist and some critic had said of it that the excellence of the writing and the pace of the narrative transcended the fact that few had heard of its subject. Bernard had a gift for writing with elegance and panache about fairly undistinguished literary figures and for writing books that sold surprisingly well.

  It was his habit to spread his works of reference out on the floor. He would create little islands of books and notebooks, a group here that dealt with his subject’s childhood, a cluster there of criticism of his works, an archipelago of the views of his peers. Two or three rooms ideally should be reserved for this purpose. Some of the books lay open, others with slips of paper inserted between their pages. The notes were in piles and that might seem haphazard to others but to Bernard were arranged in a complex but precise order.

  As soon as he was inside Peter’s flat and the front door closed behind him, Bernard began spreading his books out after this fashion. Already he felt a deep contentment that one particular notebook, containing new material he had assembled on his subject’s ancestry, would lie undisturbed surrounded by its minor islets, instead of being seized upon by Jonathan, as had happened to one of its predecessors, and given a new function as a kneading board for play dough. Bernard created a further island in the bedroom. He wouldn’t otherwise be using the bedroom and the books could just lie there for weeks, gathering dust. This was another image which afforded him an intense intellectual pleasure. His typewriter set up on the dining-table in the absence of a desk, he found himself making an enthusiastic start, something by no means usual with him.

  On the following morning, though, he recalled that the books couldn’t just lie there. No dust would gather because Judy would be coming in to see it did not. Resenting her presence in advance of her arrival, he picked up all the books, slipping bits of paper at significant pages and sealing the bedroom pile by laying on top of it, open and face-downwards, the earliest published biography of his poet. Beginning as he meant to go on, he was at the typewriter, busily working away, rather more busily and noisily in fact than the prose he was committing to paper warranted, when just after ten-thirty he heard the front door open and close.

  Some few minutes had passed before she came into the dining-room. She knocked first. Bernard was surprised by her youth. She looked no more than twenty-seven. He had expected a stout aproned motherly creature in her fifties. What clichés we make of life! She was slim, pretty, dark-haired, wearing jeans and a blouse. But the prettiness was worn and the hair was rough and dry. She was too thin for the tight jeans to be tight on her and her hip bones stuck out like the sharp curved frame of a lyre.

  ‘Could you do with a coffee?’ she said. No introduction, no greeting. Her smile was friendly and cheerful. ‘I get Peter his coffee about now.’

  Bernard castigated himself for a snob. Why on earth should she call Peter Mr Seeburg anyway? ‘Thank you. That’s very kind of you.’ He put out his hand. ‘I’m Bernard Hope.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Bernard. Peter’s told me all about you.’ For all the readily-used christian names, her manner was a little shy, her handshake tentative. ‘Do you mind if I come in here for the milk?’ she said. ‘I have to make the coffee in the bathroom but he keeps his fridge in here.’

  ‘No, please, go ahead.’

  ‘Peter said you’d want all your books left just as they were but you’re very tidy, aren’t you? She didn’t wait for an answer but said confidingly, with a slight giggle, ‘I’ll never get over him not having a kitchen. You have to laugh. I get a laugh out of it every time I come here.’

  All this s
eemed ominous to Bernard. Fearing a prolonged disturbance of his peace, he set himself to typing furiously when she returned with the coffee. Perhaps this was effective as a deterrent or else she genuinely wanted to get on with her work, for she spoke no further word to him until the time came for her departure at half-past twelve. Appearing at the dining-room door in a padded jacket, she mimed – to his astonishment – the action of pounding a keyboard.

  ‘Keep on with the good work. See you Wednesday.’

  Bernard couldn’t resist getting up to review the flat after she had gone. He was pleasantly surprised. Surfaces had been polished and there was a fresh flowery scent in the air. His books lay as he had left them, the slips of paper in place, the important notebook still face-downwards and guarding the stack beneath it. He re-created his islands. The coffee cups had disappeared, been washed and restored to their home in a china cabinet. On one of the tables in the living room was a tray covered with a cloth and on the tray was a plate of the kind of sandwiches that are called ‘dainty’, with a glass of orange juice, a polished red apple and a piece of cheese.

  His lunch. Bernard felt, quite touched, although he quickly realised that she must do this for Peter and no doubt regarded it as part of the duties for which she was paid. Since Jeremy was born Ann had never got lunch for him, he had always got his own. Not that he expected his wife to wait on him, of course not, she had the children and the house, more than enough to do. Two of the sandwiches were smoked salmon and two egg and cress. Judy must have brought their ingredients with her and assembled them in the bathroom. Next day he was preparing to say something gracious but he took a look at her and there was only one thing anyone could say.

  ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  She put her hand up to her face. She had a black eye. The cheekbone was dark red and shiny with bruising and the corner of her lip was cut. Her finger touched the bruise. ‘Fell against the door, didn’t I?’ she said. It was a curious usage of language, that interrogatory. He wasn’t sure if he had ever heard it before. ‘Kitchen door with a handle sticking out.’ She giggled. ‘That’s what comes of having kitchens. Maybe Peter’s got the right idea.’