Fatlands

  At first she wasn’t going to say. But I’m afraid I pushed her a bit. After all, that was her role in life, or obviously had been with Mattie. It came out in a great whoosh. But then some secrets are better in the open.

  ’They’d all been after him, the older girls especially. Well, he was really good-looking. But as soon as he saw Mattie that was it. I told her she’d better be careful. But she didn’t care. She used to go out at night and meet him in the grounds. She said they were really in love and that as soon as she could leave school they were going to start living together.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Tony? He kept himself to himself. Apart from Mattie. I suppose he wanted to keep it as secret as she did. I didn’t really like him that much, actually. I thought he was …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t know. Weird. A bit snooty.’

  ‘And you say it had been going on for four months?’

  ‘Since November. She made me take her place at carol rehearsals so she could meet him.’ Poor Helen. I only hope it had given her a little vicarious pleasure.

  ‘So where is he now?’

  She went into communion with her feet again. ‘I haven’t seen him. Not since—’

  ‘OK. Listen, thanks for your help. You were a good friend. She talked about you a lot.’

  And her face lit up. ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes. In fact I think maybe you should keep them after all. I’m sure that’s what she would have wanted and, well, you never know when they might come in handy.’

  And she went even pinker as her hand clasped the bag. In the background someone was calling her name. ‘You’d better go,’ I said.

  She nodded and left without looking at me again. I turned my attention to the ground. Of course after what I’d heard I didn’t really expect to find him. But I had to try.

  Behind the tennis courts and the hockey field the garden became quite dense: an overhang of big trees with shrubbery that had been allowed to go to seed. Creative gardening, maybe. To be honest I didn’t feel good about being there. Nothing specific, just a touch of the ‘city girl in the country’ blues. So when he came up behind me I experienced what I think was a mild version of a cardiac arrest.

  He wasn’t the one I was looking for. That was plain immediately. On the other hand the man in front of me certainly resembled a gardener. He had a head of hair that looked like bees had made honey in it, and a face worn away by wind and sunshine. Not a trace of the Jason Donovans about him.

  I told him I was looking for Tony. He told me so was he. I also got the impression he wasn’t surprised it was a woman doing the looking. In fact when I pursued it, grizzle-head admitted that employing Tony had been something of a mistake; that despite impeccable references and a nice line in rose pruning he just hadn’t shown the right kind of commitment to the job. In fact, when—or rather, if—he turned up again, it would be to find he didn’t have a job any more.

  When I asked if he had an address, he told me the boy had been staying in digs in town, but that according to the landlady he hadn’t been around since Friday night, and his room looked like he’d left for longer than the weekend. Well, what a surprise. I thanked him for his trouble and left him to his hedge clippers.

  As I slipped out of the main gates Helen was waiting for me. She was dawdling by the trees, trying to look as if she wasn’t there, which in her case wasn’t that easy. I thought of all those photos of myself at fourteen, crammed into little shift dresses for all the world like an overstuffed saveloy, and I wondered if I shouldn’t offer her some hope for the future. But if someone had brought it to my attention then, I probably would have died of shame. She didn’t say much, just handed me a large brown envelope. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach from the moment I saw it in her hand.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something Mattie kept in my locker. We always swapped private things. Sometimes other girls do raids …’

  Ah yes, I had forgotten just how nasty young girls could be to one another. I wondered what Helen had swapped. Not a lot, I suspect. As it was, you could see she wasn’t at all sure she was doing the right thing by keeping it, let alone by giving it to me.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘What would you like me to do with it?’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t know …’

  Too much responsibility, that was her trouble. To the living and the dead. ‘I tell you what. If I think it’s important, I’ll make sure the right people see it. And I won’t involve you. OK?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  She turned. But there was one more question. A case of mopping up, really. ‘Oh, Helen, one thing. That night … the night she died. Did you by any chance call Mattie at her father’s house? It would have been about 6.30.’

  She frowned, then shook her head. ‘No.’

  Girls’secrets? We all have them. Worth checking. ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes … I mean, how could I? We’re not allowed to use the phone until after seven.’

  ‘Fine. Thanks a lot.’

  And she disappeared. I walked back to the car, the envelope stuck to my hand. But I had decided to wait. To open it somewhere where she had been with me, so if necessary she could look over my shoulder. Once back in the driving seat I carefully slit the top and shook out the contents. A set of roughly printed leafl ets fell into my lap. I recognized the picture on the front of one: a rabbit with half its fur ripped away and a mark like an acid burn covering the exposed flesh. I didn’t need to read the copy to find out how my last suntan had helped to incinerate a thousand animals. The other leafl ets told more horror stories, the kind of thing to revolt a young girl’s sensibilities and make her think badly of her father. I was looking so hard at them I almost missed the last billet-doux. It was stuck at the bottom of the envelope and I had to tease it out with my fingers. It was worth the work.

  I was staring at a blurred black-and-white photograph of a young man in half-profile, hair quiffed back, cigarette in his mouth, a moody look in his eyes. Behind him were what looked like the gardens of Debringham College. It had the feel of a photo taken without his knowing, either that or a fashion editor had spent a number of hours making it seem like that. I looked at the curl of the cigarette smoke and thought briefl y of the irony of lung cancer, Tom Shepherd’s research and cruelty to animals. But mostly I thought of the boy himself. Twenty? twenty five? Maybe older, it was hard to tell. But one thing was easy. Even from the semi-profile you could see what all the fuss was about. Yes, indeed. Mattie had got herself quite a catch. Shame about his politics.

  CHAPTER NINE Try a Little Tenderness

  ‘He’s trying to look like James Dean.’

  ‘Matt Dillon, more like.’

  ‘Who’s Matt Dillon?’

  ‘James Dean forty years on. God, Frank, this is youth culture. You’ve got to make an effort.’

  ‘I don’t see why. My parents never did.’ He threw the photo back down on the desk and took a swig of tea. ‘Still, whoever he looks like, he’s not a man eager to have his picture taken.’

  ‘Well, it is a little incriminating, isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He picked up the leafl ets and flicked through them, making faces. Then he looked at me. ‘So, what do you think you’ve got?’

  I took a breath. ‘I think Mattie Shepherd was having an affair with an animal rights activist, posing as the assistant school gardener. And I think it was through her that the ALF got whatever stuff they had on her father.’

  ‘Woooh! And I think you’ve got an overactive imagination.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Frank. I know you don’t approve of me doing this, but don’t treat me like a moron.’

  ‘Hannah, if I thought you were a moron, I would have given you your own personal copy of the telephone answering-machine messages from Sunday night. Ben Maringo, remember? Yes, thank you. I like a girl who has the decency to look embarrassed. Was he a help?’

  ‘He was.
Thanks,’ I said somewhat belligerently, and repeated what Maringo had told me about the ALF cells, their level of autonomy and secrecy. And their possible extremism.

  ‘And you think this guy’s one of them?’

  ‘The timing fits. Shepherd first received threats in early December, a month after Mattie started visiting the potting shed. And if the gardener really had nothing to do with it, then he’d still be at work. Anyway, who else would have given her the leaflets?’

  ‘It could have been a school project.’

  ‘Frank, have you looked at this stuff?’

  He humphed in a Frank kind of way. ‘You really think she would have shopped her father?’

  ‘Well, she was pretty mad at him. The whole point was his work had become more important than his family. I think she might have wanted to get even with him somehow. Yes?’

  ‘But not to have him killed.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And that’s what you think she was doing that night in his study. Going through his papers looking for stuff.’

  ‘Well, she certainly wasn’t looking for theatre tickets.’

  ‘Except if her boyfriend was animal rights then he would have known about the bomb. Which made it a bit late for her to be looking for more evidence.’

  ‘Maybe they didn’t tell him.’

  ‘Come on, Hannah, no one plays it that close to their chest.’

  I thought again. ‘OK. Maybe she wasn’t meant to be there in the first place.’Step by step. Like learning to walk: first the basics, then the fancy work. ‘I mean the police have no way of knowing when the bomb was put there, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But since it’s not something you’d do in broad daylight, it must have been done the night before. And what was Shepherd meant to be doing next morning? Getting up at the crack of dawn and driving down to Somerset to pick up his daughter. And who would know about that? Mattie and, therefore, loverboy. But then, at the last minute, Shepherd cancels. What time?’

  ‘6.15, 6.25. I was walking out the door.’

  ‘And you’re the only one he tells.’

  ‘No, he rang the school.’

  ‘Yes. But the school didn’t tell Mattie till the next morning because they knew she’d be pissed off. Patricia Parkin said that herself. And by then the boy’s long gone. Nobody at Debringham had seen him since Friday afternoon. So as far as he—and presumably, they—are concerned everything’s still on course for Shepherd’s early-morning appointment in hell.’

  ‘OK. So when did they find out?’ And you could see he was enjoying it. Maybe it reminded him of the old days, smoke-filled rooms, men with their ties off bonding over matters of life and death. Truth be told, it was one of my favourite bits too, being a surrogate male colleague.

  ‘I suppose when someone drove down the road to check and found the car still outside the house. But by then there’s nothing they can do. I mean they can hardly walk up in broad daylight and take it off again.’

  ‘But they must have realized the next time the car was used it might not be him on his own. In fact it would almost certainly have been the two of them together.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was an uncomfortable conclusion. A mad scientist was one thing, his innocent daughter another.

  Frank shrugged. ‘Well, you’re the one who thinks they’ve got principles. Why didnt loverboy try and warn her?’

  And once again I heard the first ring of a telephone call. And I saw Mattie with her back to the door, papers in one hand, phone in the other, arguing with someone. Only a matter of deduction. If it wasn’t her father and it wasn’t Helen, who else could it have been? In which case why hadn’t he warned her? Or maybe he was trying. Maybe he never got around to it because I interrupted the call. ‘Listen, I have to go now. I’ll see you. I mean, you won’t be late will you?’ But see you where? Back at the school? Or sooner? Maybe the visit to the car was just an excuse all along. And once she had got the entertainment guide she would have made a run for it. Whatever it was, she hadn’t exactly given him time to answer back.

  Frank was watching me. I thought about telling him, but right at that moment I didn’t need to feel any worse than I already did. ‘I don’t know,’ I said feebly.

  After a while he said, ‘I don’t suppose you want my version?’

  I smiled. ‘Would that stop you giving it?’

  ‘The problem with knowing too little is you have to make up too much. You’ve got a picture of a boy, probably a boyfriend, who may or may not be connected to the ALF. The rest is speculation. Healthy exercise, but not to be trusted.’

  Good old Frank, pulling me back from the brink again. ‘So, what should I do?’

  ‘Well, I’d say you’d better go looking for Bob Dylan.’

  ‘Matt.’ He grinned. ‘I just want you to know I can see through your lies.’

  It took me a little while. But then I wasn’t expecting it. And I hadn’t been there in his heyday. ‘That’s very good.’

  ‘Yes, well some of us are old enough to remember the Isle of Wight. I never liked him after he went electric. Meanwhile, what are you going to do with this?’ He pointed to the envelope.

  I shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘You said yourself I can’t prove anything. It’d be a waste of their time.’ I made myself busy not looking at him.

  ‘Hannah?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at me.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  ‘You did tell them everything that happened that night, didn’t you?’

  ‘Sure. I—’

  Telephones. Sometimes I swear they know they’re being talked about. He picked up the receiver, but kept his eyes on me. ‘Comfort and Security. What d’you want?’ He’s got a great telephone manner, Frank. If I were in trouble, I’d be round like a shot. ‘Yes, it is.’ Pause. ‘Yes, she does, but I’m not sure she’s here at the moment. Can I ask who’s calling?’ His tone changed. ‘If you’d just hold on a minute.’ He put his hand over the receiver. ‘She says her name is Christine Shepherd, and she wants to meet you.’ Thank you, Christine.

  It wasn’t as good an address as her husband’s: a purpose-built apartment block off Shepherd’s Bush Green, with one of those front gardens that is no one’s responsibility except the neighborhood dogs’. The flat was on the fifth floor. The lift was cleaner than the garden, but not exactly a triumph of design. When I got out on the top landing, all the front doors had different colours and doorbells to them. The whole place had a feel of built-public, gone-private about it.

  The door opened on an older version of Mattie: the same great mane of hair, and the same straight little nose and upward tilt of the mouth. But a smile that would never reach the eyes again, like someone else I knew. They might have been at war, but she and Tom Shepherd had more in common than they realized. It made you wish for a happier ending. ‘My wife is a disturbed, unstable woman.’ Those had been his words. At first sight they wouldn’t have been mine. We shook hands and she stood aside to let me in.

  The sitting-room was neat and stylish on a limited budget. From the kitchen beyond I heard someone at work. So Christine’s man was new in more ways than one. Maybe she was the one who changed the plugs now. She sat down. I did the same. Except neither of us knew where to start. So you’re the woman who watched my daughter go up in flames … You could see the opening sally wouldn’t be easy.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  ‘You’ re welcome.

  ‘Have you seen Tom?’

  I nodded.

  Her fingers did imaginary crochet in her lap. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Upset. Angry.’ Inadequate words, but the only ones I had.

  ‘With me?’

  ‘I think with everything. Maybe with himself if he knew it.’

  ‘If he knew it,’she repeated quietly. ‘Yes. Did he talk about me?’

  ‘No. Not a lot.’ Well, it was only a small lie.

  ‘I see.’
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  I sat waiting, staring at the rug. Nice piece, the kind that improves with study. In the end I had to help her. Well, wouldn’t you? ‘Mrs Shepherd, would you like me to tell you what happened?’

  She looked up, but didn’t speak. Women, of course, cry more easily than men; it doesn’t necessarily mean they feel things more deeply. Still, it was awful to watch. She nodded slightly. I took a breath and told her what she wanted to know.

  I don’t know if it helped. I mean, what comfort can anyone gain from hearing a story which moves so inexorably towards death? I made it as gentle as I could and I filled it with Mattie’s optimism and spirit and humour, as if those things could somehow transcend the tragedy. I said very little about her anger, although I think we both knew I had left it out. She cried silently as I talked, nodding occasionally and wiping her eyes with her fingers, and towards the end when her fingers weren’t enough, she put her head in her hands and sat for a while.

  I waited, my back to the kitchen door. The clatter of crockery had stopped midway through the story, and now something made me turn my head.

  She was standing in the doorway. It was hard to tell how long she’d been there. She was tall, attractive, with red hair, well cut, and a strong, open face. What really gave it away though, was how she was looking at Christine. She crossed the room and sat on the arm of the sofa, the line of her thigh touching Christine’s arm. Then she put a hand gently on her shoulder. And there was, in that gesture, something that transcended any notion of sisterly affection. For her part Christine didn’t even look up. She simply lifted her own hand and put it on top of her lover’s. And so, gradually, the strength of their physical contact pulled her back into the land of the living.

  And, of course, now I knew, far from being strange, it all seemed so obvious. Obvious and almost welcome. Or maybe I am confusing that feeling with relief, because now at last I could understand the ferocity of all the emotions, both in Mattie and her father. So much rage and pain. How else do you cope with a wife who doesn’t want a husband, and a mother who appears to prefer another woman to her own daughter?

  Over Christine’s head her lover offered me the slightest smile of introduction. ‘Veronica Marchant,’she said, and it was a voice to match the face, clean and clear. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ I nodded. She watched me, then frowned slightly. ‘You didn’t know?’