Greyglass Page 14

  She had felt already tired and depressed when she got into the cab. Walking into the terminal, where the crowds swirled over endless floors, she felt drained – by the crowd, the space and its synthetic smell, the dull morning light, the cabdriver, her mother, everything.

  Is she going to recognise me? Perhaps I should hold up a card printed with my name or hers.

  Then another thought, worse. Will I recognise her?

  It was a long wait.

  Sourly, the thoughts pressed home. What are we going to say to each other? Do together? (I could have introduced her to Crissie – the gush of pride – “This is Crissie, my friend –” But that was out of the question, now. Susan had been avoiding Crissie, and Crissie made no overtures. Susan… didn’t know about Crissie.)

  (Or anything.)

  When Anne finally came through, Susan started almost in alarm. For Anne looked just as she had always done. She wore a well-cut navy suit, not even seeming at all crumpled. She was tanned, eyes and lips painted, her shortish hair a sheer bold white. Her nails were pale gold and on her hand flared the emerald. She carried one small suitcase, a piece of hand luggage and her American purse.

  “Anne – you look wonderful!” Susan cried in a shambles of shame. And even as she said it, having now come near enough, she saw that the suit was crumpled, a very little, that the white hair was too dry, the brown skin creased, the mouth too bright. And with this too-bright mouth Anne leaned forward and kissed her, hugging her in the bony embrace, leaving a lipstick mark Susan could feel on her cheek, and had to wipe away surreptitiously. Anne would never have done that, not even last time – but ten, twelve years had passed. Had it really been so long?

  “God, I am exhausted,” said Anne. Her eyes were not very clear, she looked half-cornered with irritation. “What a goddam bloody flight. Turbulence – delays – how late am I?”

  “About two hours.”

  “Christ. That was the other thing. My watch stopped. Wouldn’t you know it? One year old from Tiffany’s, and it stops. This is Delores.”

  Susan looked where her mother off-handedly indicated. Susan had forgotten the annoyingly foisted twelve-year-old child who had had to fly in with Anne.

  Delores had a honey skin with large black eyes. Her soft dark springing hair was tied in two long plaits. She wore a jumper, ski-jacket and jeans. She did not, Susan thought, look like a child, at least not really like an English child – or not like any child from Susan’s childhood. Not like Susan, of course, not at all. Susan, at twelve, would have envied Delores her spotless complexion and slight figure, possibly her pierced ears and the little gold studs.

  Delores did not smile. She seemed bored and evasive, her eyes shifting off from Susan. She didn’t bother to return Susan’s greeting.

  “Is the cab waiting?” said Anne. “Good. Let’s get the bathroom, then I need a drink.”

  Anne had been drinking already. She smelled of alcohol, again something Susan didn’t remember from before. Even after her nights out, Anne had never smelled of anything other than cleanness and scent, or perhaps a partner’s cigarettes.

  In the bar, Anne had a double vodka tonic. Susan had a white wine spritzer. The child, when asked what she wanted, said, “Coke,” untainted either by please or thank you.

  “Is she all right?” Susan said to her mother, when Delores suddenly got up and walked away. She didn’t go far, only to a fruit machine, at which she stared.

  “Depends on how you class all right,” said Anne. The drink had freshened her. She sounded less husky. Face to face her U.S. accent was hardly noticeable, except on certain words – class, God, and so on.

  Delores meandered back. She looked at Anne, looked away. “I wanna dollar change.”

  “Dollars don’t work over here, Delores,” said Anne, briskly. “Eve gave you some English money at Kennedy, didn’t she?”

  Delores blinked. She didn’t open her own small purse, a buckled denim creation.

  Anne said, “She forgot then. What is it you want?”

  “I wanna play that.”

  Susan said, “Here, have this.”

  When Delores had gone back to the machine, Susan said, “She seems a bit –”

  “She is a bit. Oh boy, is she. A brat, I said.”

  It was a relief to be able to have the child to talk about.

  “Maybe she’s just nervous. She’s Eve Frenowsky’s niece?”

  “Something like that. Look, she’s got the darn thing working. But it won’t cough up, so she’s hitting it –” Anne called across the bar, nearly stridently, “Delores, lay off!”

  To Susan’s surprise, Delores turned a fixed, somehow bleached face to Anne. She nodded swiftly. She looked terrified.

  “Funny kid,” said Anne. “I can’t make her out. I tried to talk to her, asked her if she was excited, coming to see her father. She shook her little head. Well, I guess she’s been over before. Eve says they’re separated, the parents. Rich as hell.” Anne shrugged. “But she is a bloody graceless child. But then kids are.”

  “Are they?”

  “Wait till you have one.”

  Susan said, “I have waited. I don’t want children.”

  Anne said, “Sensible.”

  Susan thought, Is she going to say, I wish I never had?

  But Anne only said, “I asked him to come, you know.”

  “Wizz.”

  “Yep. I knew he’d say no, and he said no. I have a feeling he is all set for a mad fling while I am over here. Some nubile eighteen-year-old. Or why stop at only one?”

  “Do you think we ought to go and find the cab – he’s been waiting so long.”

  “Yeah, I guess. This vodka is crap. That is one of the many benefits of the U.S., decent food, decent booze. And the vitamins, what you can get there. And the treatments.”

  Susan went over to fetch Delores from the fruit machine. She hadn’t won anything. She was the sort of demanding ungiving child you expected to win.

  “We’re going out to the car now, Delores.”

  Delores glanced at her, away. Any fright at a raised voice was gone. But she left the machine without demur.

  The driver didn’t chat now; he seemed to expect them to converse with each other, and so perhaps entertain him and feed him information.

  They all squashed in the back, the child wedged uncomfortably in the middle like a thin bolster.

  “Eve said she has to sit there, and the window seat on the plane. She doesn’t like other seats.”

  This seemed strange, for if Delores wanted to be by the window in the plane, why not the window in the car?

  Susan felt uneasy, as they breathed wine and vodka over her, talking across her inert dark head. But then, Anne had already baptised her in this, no doubt, during the flight.

  “I can’t wait to see London,” said Anne. “It looks so small and old.”

  Then she leaned back. She shut her eyes which were overlaid by shadow and a mascara too black for the aging tan and the white hair. The knuckles of her hands had enlarged. Probably now she could never take off Wizz’s emerald ring, even if she wanted to.

  Susan gazed from the cab window, watched miles of concrete streaming past, houses and trees and a succession of disturbingly big, low planes.

  When she turned to her mother again, she saw Anne had fallen asleep, her mouth slightly open.

  Susan’s heart sank lower. She felt wounded, defiled, by Anne’s decay. She felt – embarrassed by her.

  Then she remembered her childhood – Anne, in the bath, or varnishing her toenails. Susan wanted to cry. But she was too old herself for that.

  And then Susan thought of pouring all this out to Crissie, and how Crissie would be, kind and tender, encouraging and interested, philosophical, never saying the wrong thing. Helping, wonderful Crissie.

  But there could be no more indulgence in Crissie, who might after all be a dangerously crazy liar-lunatic.

  I never told Crissie about Catherine, Susan thought. Everyone else,
but not my grandmother. I nearly did, when she was going on about her poltergeist nonsense. Nearly then. But I didn’t.

  The suburbs trailed by. Susan thought of being hurried, always late, to the house on Sundays. She thought of Catherine standing there, that last time, straight and hard and ruined.

  She could see Catherine now again, in the face of Anne.

  The journey didn’t seem to take long. There was a lot of traffic rumbling the same way, to London, but no significant hold-ups.

  “Look, there’s Big Ben,” said Susan, stupidly, to Delores. Who took no notice.

  But Anne gave a little snort and woke up.

  “God. Was I asleep?”

  “I think so,” said Susan. “You must be tired.”

  “I don’t get that jet-lag stuff,” said Anne stubbornly. “But I guess I’m tired.” Then she seemed to shake herself together, sitting up, moving her hand over her hair, redoing her lipstick in a car-jolted compact mirror.

  “Okay, Delores, we’ll be there in a minute.”

  Delores moved vaguely on the seat. Her mouth looked sulky, her eyes almost moronic.

  “Where does Delores have to go – I mean where is her father meeting her?”

  “It’s an address I have here, off Whitehall. I told the taxi.”

  A few minutes later, they turned into a street of large, flat-faced terraced buildings. Broad stone steps, guarded by stone lions with heraldic shields, led to glass doors whose handles glinted cold gold in the muddy sun.

  “Impressive, your daddy’s office,” said Anne.

  “What number was it, madam?”

  The taxi crawled to a halt.

  At that instant the child glanced again at Susan. Delores’ face was a total blank. Perhaps there really was something wrong with her mentally. The great black eyes seemed to have no one in behind them, not a child, not a person, no one at all.

  Unnervingly, before Susan could get out of the cab to give her access, Delores scrambled unheedingly over her. Anne was already on the pavement, and took the child’s hand firmly. Susan could picture Eve saying, “You have to hold her hand on the street.”

  “It’s okay, Sue. I’ll see to this. There’s the doorman.”

  A porter had appeared. Anne conducted the child up the stone steps, and spoke to him. A snatch of Anne’s voice, over the traffic noise, said a foreign name, (not Frenowsky, Susan thought) something she didn’t quite catch, or afterwards recall.

  Anne and the child went through into a plush, black-carpeted lacuna beyond the glass doors.

  Unexpectedly, the driver didn’t start to chat now, either. Susan had assumed he would break loose again, if he and she were alone. Instead they both sat there, dumbly waiting, he with his back to her. Minutes went by.

  Susan said, “Perhaps I ought to –” But exactly then Anne came out of the swing doors alone.

  “Thank Christ that’s seen to. Someone came down in the elevator. Not the father, mind you. A big guy in a suit. Well, he looked like a bouncer to me. But he knew about Delores. He was very pleasant to me. She just took his hand like a lamb. You know, little bitch, she was all goofy smiles for him, flirting away.”

  “Where to, madam?” said the driver.

  “Oh, take me to a decent pub,” sighed Anne.

  Susan was unsure, but the driver said, “What about the Royal Lion, just around the corner there. Nice enough place, and quiet.”

  So they drove round to the Royal Lion.

  Anne paid the driver in cash, (he did not offer to assist with Anne’s luggage) and the cab moved slowly off, ahead of two big cars that had also pulled into the street.

  The pub looked shabby to Susan. It was not very clean, but there was picturesque sawdust on the floor and old, dark green pots with deadish plants in them – perhaps things the driver thought an American might find quaint. A few people drank at tottery tables. Through a doorway there came a rap of balls in a pool game.

  “Shall I get some sandwiches?” Susan asked. “If they do them.”

  “If you like,” said Anne. “I’m not hungry.”

  But the Royal Lion did not do sandwiches, only bags of crisps and peanuts. Susan thought Anne would be able to get something to eat when they reached her hotel, something to soak up some of the alcohol.

  As Susan brought the drinks back to their own rickety table, a tall man in a leather jacket came in from the street. She noticed him for a second because, though younger, he reminded her faintly of R.J.

  “Cheers,” said Anne. “That’s English enough, isn’t it?”

  Susan laughed falsely. “Oh, yes.”

  Anne swallowed some of her drink. “I’ve had enough,” she said.

  “Well maybe if we eat soon –”

  “No, Susan, I don’t mean the booze. I mean I have had it with him. I have had it.”

  Susan cleared her throat. She wished she were not so conscious of the man like R.J., somewhere behind her. R.J. was not what she needed to be reminded of. And not now.

  “You mean Wizz.”

  “Yes. Who else. I am going to leave Wizz. Oh, I haven’t told him yet. He thinks I’m all set to go on clinging tooth and claw to our non-existent relationship. But I am not. No way.”

  “What will you do?”

  Don’t, please don’t say you will move back to England and live with me.

  Anne parted her enamelled lips to tell Susan what she would do, and instead of elaborating, looked up in surprise. The shadow lay over their table. It was the man like R.J. He wasn’t like R.J. There were three other men, casually dressed, well-built, and a woman in fawn slacks and a cashmere sweater.

  The man who was not R.J. had something which he was showing them, some sort of I.D., like a plain-clothes policeman.

  “Get up, madam.”

  Anne’s face was furious. “What the hell is this? What the fuck do you want?”

  The man leaned over and pulled her to her feet, and Susan found she too stood up at the same time, as if some cord connected them. And Anne seemed to struggle, and the woman in the sweater was there. She spoke softly. “You and the young woman come with us now, and quietly. Or we can cuff you and drag you out. Which?”

  Outside the sun had gone in. The two large dark cars waited with open doors. This was a dream.

  As Anne was ‘helped’ into one car, and Susan into the one behind, Susan tried to speak. “Save it,” said the man who wasn’t like R.J. Then she was sitting crushed between two of the other men, just as Delores had had to sit between herself and Anne.

  During the hours when she stayed in the steel-white room, she thought it through, and saw the shape of it. Having seen, Susan saw that it was obvious. She should have known. Anne should have known. Or had Anne known? They thought so. Or – did they?

  A uniformed woman sat at a small table in the corner. First she ate a bar of chocolate. Then she took another one out of a drawer in the table, and ate that. Later, much later, she took out another, and ate that too. Each bar was of a different make.

  The light was too bright. There were no windows, and they probably locked the door, although Susan wasn’t sure; she never attempted to open it. Once she asked for the lavatory. They made her wait nearly half an hour, then another woman came and took her to a toilet of three cubicles just along the passage. “Leave the door open.” So Susan left the cubicle door open, and sitting pissing in front of this other woman, who did, actually, turn her head slightly away, Susan remembered the awful bathroom in Wizz’s loft, with its two pally lavatories done in matching black and gold.

  At other times, a man and a woman questioned her. She supposed that was what they were doing. They were not any of the men, or the one woman, who had taken Anne and Susan into custody at the pub. The man had gingery hair and a freckled scowl. The woman looked French, a delicate and sharply-made brunette. But she spoke with a slight trace of a Scottish accent.

  “Where’s my mother?”

  “Don’t worry about your mother.”

  “Of course I am
. What have you done with her?”

  “The same as we’re doing with you, Miss Wilde.”

  “Why am I – why are we here?”

  It turned out they were there because of Delores, that brain-dead, rude and graceless child, who, with the man from her father’s office, had become melting and friendly.

  It turned out too that Delores’ attitude and manner were undoubtedly the product of her intense conditioning, over a period of time, to know who must be made up to, and who must not. Also, of course, to a fear and horror and misery beyond anything such a child should ever know.

  As it came clear to Susan, she was racked not only by her own leaden fear and panic, and her appalled concerns about Anne, but by remorse. The very young girl Anne had brought from JFK to London was no relative of Eve’s, no daughter of a rich friend of Wizz’s. She was one of those lost children, there to be taken by stealth or connivance from the sinks of most cities, warped and worked into the appropriate consistency, then flown out like refrigerated flowers to any destination that could pay.

  She wasn’t the first commodity that Anne had ‘delivered’ for Wizz, and therefore for the firm. Anne, the paid or unpaid courier. What had those things been in the past, the thing she had had to take to the Georgian manor house near Brighton, the packets for Paris, and Germany. Illegal smuggled jewels or art treasures? Hard drugs?

  They imported everything, the firm. Anne had said that once. A joke? Imported and exported.

  Susan, as she put the pieces together, began trying to explain them to the people who talked to her on and on in the steel-white room. They were already aware of them, naturally.

  “My mother didn’t know – she’s been duped. He’s used her.”

  Basic psychology. Wizz wanted to get rid of Anne. He hadn’t known she’d planned to leave him. So if she were caught – too bad?

  Susan grasped he would be safe away. Already she could tell this operation would have been far reaching. There would be others working on the other side of the Atlantic, to trap Wizz’s firm. But most would escape. Wizz always would.

  He’s a gangster.

  She had sensed it at sixteen, and Anne had not. But then, Anne was in love with him. What could Susan say she had known about R.J., really known? Love was blind, or blinded itself.