Burning is a Substitute for Loving Read online

  ‘Sex is left out of some people,’ said Charmian, protestingly. ‘I think it was with me.’

  But Grizel’s words left a sting. There had been episodes in Charmian’s life that suggested she was not without passions. Three years ago there had been a man, just a bit older than she was, extremely talented, and potentially headed for success, but who was then going through a period of storm and drama. He was difficult company, lively, moody and quarrelsome. Charmian had found herself defending him and protecting him both from his colleagues and his wife. He for his part sought her sympathies. Even Charmian had recognised the inflammable quality of that relationship and withdrawn rapidly.

  Like many clever young women she had been in love with her teachers, first the middle-aged man who had taught her Latin, and then the enthusiastic young one who had lectured to her on the Wars of Religion, and whom she believed to be largely responsible for her choosing to become a policewoman. But in fact the decision had been the result of her own hard-headed choosing; she wanted a career, she wanted one where she believed she could rise quickly, and she wanted one where she could use her sense of justice and order. She had left Glasgow University and embarked straight away as a policewoman in Dundee and then St Andrews, walking the beat. Deliberately she made the choice to come south and join the police force in Deerham Hills as a member of the detective force. She saw more future for herself there than in Scotland. There is only one more fearsome thing than a Scotsman on the make, she told herself with wry amusement, and that is a Scotswoman. She had a small car, she was saving up to buy a small house, and all the time she was developing her system of cross-reference to everyone she met in Deerham Hills. She knew where all the small events linked up in people’s lives that made the large ones understandable. She alone was not surprised when the manager of the local bank left his wife never to return, and she knew, too, why the shop in Frances Street changed hands every few months. She had made it her business to build up a little network of stool pigeons in Deerham Hills. ‘A police force that uses all its sources of information is one that works,’ she said to Grizel, her subordinate and junior, when Grizel protested one day at her methods. ‘You don’t think of yourself as a policewoman but as a great kind nanny.’ ‘Anyway, I’m a human being,’ Grizel had retorted.

  Charmian wrapped up the silver shoes in their blue tissue paper and restored them to their box. They had been damned uncomfortable but they had cost over seven pounds and she would certainly look after them. Last night she had been too tired and angry to care. Her partner had been a C.I.D. police sergeant from Central, introduced by Grizel. He was a thick-set, powerfully built, tough young man, slightly shorter than Charmian herself in her high-heeled slippers. As a result Charmian found herself angrily clenching her toes inside her shoes at every dance and trying to shrink that vital inch, which was probably why she now had a blister and a sore toe. They had spent a tense irritable evening, getting across each other.

  In her bare feet Charmian padded across the room and looked out of the window across the river towards the other side of Deerham Hills. She could still see Harry at the window and he was still looking at her. But she had other things on her mind than Harry.

  Was the fire still burning? Did she imagine a glow in the sky? She could certainly smell smoke. As the crow flies she was not far away.

  Methodically Charmian set about tidying her sitting-room. She had no cleaning woman, although her landlady saw to the laundry and the rough cleaning, and Charmian, who was practical if not domesticated, let disorder accumulate and had one day of reckoning in a week. Owing to pressure of work two weeks had passed this time. Or it may have been three. It looked like three.

  On top of a pile of nylon stockings she saw a small bunch of flowers with a note pinned to it. Her landlady must have placed it there in the hope that on the stockings, if nowhere else, it might be noticed. Charmian did not know the handwriting but she guessed it was from her partner of last night. She smiled a little grimly as she opened it. She fancied that in his way he had minded the extra inch of height quite as much as she had.

  There was really nothing in the note at all, only a few initialled words of thanks. If she had wanted another meeting, and of course she hadn’t, there was no suggestion of it. ‘Account signed, sealed and paid for,’ murmured Charmian to herself. She put the flowers in water and the note in the rubbish.

  She piled all her unanswered letters (three from home) on her desk, tidied her unopened newspaper onto a stack to be read if she ever got time, and brushed away the litter of cigarette ash and dust which seemed to have deposited itself all over everything. On her desk she found a tablet of medicine, one of Harry’s pills which she remembered had rolled out of his pocket one day. She debated throwing it away, then carefully wrapped it in a tissue and put it in her coat pocket ready to give to him. You could never tell. It might come in useful.

  All the time she worked she was waiting for the telephone to ring. She was expecting to have to work again that night. She had spent the last half hour before she came home brooding over her card index, studying four names.

  Mrs Josephine Cammel.

  Mrs Freda Masterton.

  Miss Lacey Dodge.

  Miss Jean Lockhart.

  It was by now probable that all four were dead. If the telephone rang it would mean their deaths were work for her.

  All four names had been in her card index, but represented there by such slight symbols that it had never looked possible they could come her way professionally. Which just shows, thought Charmian. Which just shows.

  Mrs Cammel, 47, was recorded by Charmian as having presided over the Deerham Hills Christmas Dance, which had been fancy dress, masquerading as Marie Antoinette. This alone would not, of course, have gained her a place in Charmian’s records, but at this dance it so happened the Empress Eugenie’s mink wrap had been stolen and Charmian had appeared on the scene.

  Mrs Freda Masterton, 51, had been a doctor, and was a newcomer to Deerham Hills. She had been noted by Charmian as the organiser of the Deerham Hills Blood Donors Group. She had witnessed a fatal road accident some eighteen months ago. She had been leaving Miss Lockhart’s shop at the time. But Miss Lockhart, questioned, had seen nothing. Mrs Masterton had seen very little more.

  Miss Lacey Dodge, was the most prominent of the four people, at any rate as far as Charmian’s professional gaze was concerned. Gay, lively, charming, she had been the horrified bystander of a smash and grab raid in Bond Street about six months ago.

  Miss Jean Lockhart, aged about 38, give or take a few years, was a shopkeeper in Deerham Hills. She had only been living in the town about ten months, but she had complained to the headmaster of Deerham Hills High School about boys staring in her window and being unpleasant. Charmian had been sent down to investigate but had found nothing tangible. When closely questioned Miss Lockhart didn’t seem clear if it was boy or boys, or what exactly had been done that repelled her.

  That afternoon Miss Jean Lockhart had reopened her shop in which she sold underwear and stockings, after lunch, which she took alone in the restaurant near by. At two-thirty she had one customer who left in a few minutes. At ten minutes to three Mrs Cammel and Mrs Masterton entered the shop together and at three o’clock Miss Lacey Dodge went in. Mrs Cammel and Mrs Masterton were still in the shop.

  At two minutes past three, as near as could be judged, there was an explosion and the shop was lit by flames. It seemed instantaneous and fierce. By the time the fire brigade and police got there the little place was already gutted. The four women were in hospital, two were certainly dead and the other two very close to death.

  Only Lacey Dodge had been able to say anything. ‘It seemed to jump right out of her bag,’ she muttered. ‘Right out of her bag.’

  Charmian went to the window again. This time it seemed to her that even the faint red glow against the sky had died down. Perhaps it had always been imagination. Harry was still at his window with his head bent over a book. He looke
d up and saw her and smiled. Charmian moved away from the window rapidly; she did not wish to smile back. She had been for some time, and she knew it, a member of Harry’s fantasy world. She contributed to it. She had encouraged him to regard the missing member of the family (she used Harry’s own phrase) as a real problem; she had suggested he go after it like a detective picking up details and matching them up, regarding nothing as proven, but putting everything together to make a picture. She had done all this because she liked Harry. Now she regretted his rather sinister preoccupation with the woman.

  She was unaware that she was the only person he had told.

  The telephone rang. Before going to answer it she put on her shoes and smoothed her hair, half unconsciously putting herself on duty.

  ‘Nothing for you Charmian,’ said Inspector Pratt’s voice. ‘Nothing for any of us. As far as can be discovered at the moment it was just an ordinary gas leak. It ignited and caused the explosion.’ He sounded tired but it might also be that he was just unhappy. Mrs Cammel had been a friend of his wife.

  ‘What about Mrs Masterton and Lacey Dodge?’ she asked.

  ‘Mrs Masterton died, but Lacey’ll be all right. Might be scarred though.’ Now it was definite that he sounded unhappy.

  ‘I’m glad she’s alive.’

  ‘Yes, she was just at the door. It protected her a bit.’ He sounded faintly, very faintly puzzled. Had he not been so tired and miserable there might have been a clear query in his voice. ‘Anyway there’s nothing for you, Charmian. Nothing to investigate.’

  Charmian put the receiver down and kicked off her shoes. For a variety of reasons she was greatly relieved.

  Harry had gone upstairs to his bedroom. It was a room overlooking the street which he had turned, in defiance of his aunt’s pleas that bedrooms were for sleeping, into a pretty fair imitation of a sitting-room cum study. He was handy with his tools (both he and Joe held in absolute contempt men who were intellectuals only. They intended to be able to cook, sew, and make) and had knocked together a set of bookshelves and also a table which held his precious second-, or possibly even third-hand typewriter. He sat down now and looked at the page in it with pleasure. He was practising writing in the style of various historians. He had done Macaulay, dismissed Gibbon as altogether too easy, and was just rubbing out a pretty fair imitation of Tawney. He wondered if this would get him a scholarship to an Oxford college, and if so, to which one? Was content really as necessary as style? he wondered. There seemed to be evidence on both sides.

  He could tell Aunty had been dusting his room again. You could mark the path of her dusting, little objects pushed over, books shoved back anyhow, pictures crooked, she was a clumsy duster, he could do the job better himself. It usually took a good half an hour to get the room to rights after Aunt had been at it. But it was a job he enjoyed and found soothing. Patiently, methodically, he worked his way round the room. It was small for a bedroom and crowded with possessions. There were the things that had been in the room anyway, the basic furnishings, and superimposed were the things Harry had brought in as he started to assert himself. The effect was of two personalities warring with each other, rather as if one tribe had conquered another one and was sitting on its head. Warring but not necessarily alien cultures, for here was a family resemblance. Say what he would, Harry was a Cobb; his possessions too, were solid, well constructed, meant to last. Harry of course did not see the submerged portion of his room; to him the room expressed only his personality, the rest he took for granted, it had been there all his life.

  There were a number of small possessions which dated from his childhood. There on the shelf were a row of small china figures, a pussy cat, a rabbit, a spaniel dog with its tongue hanging out; below were books he had outgrown but couldn’t quite bear to part with; on the top of his desk a round, brass perpetual calendar of the sort that goes for a hundred years if you swivel all the little knobs but which in fact no one ever uses at all. Harry never had, but he had preserved it lovingly. Might come in for his extreme old age, if he ever got that far. Underneath the books were a set of jigsaw puzzles, a map of the world, the counties of England, and underneath that were a few even more childish things, wooden puzzles, a set of little plastic balls. Come to think of it, he seemed to have hung on to his kid stuff for much longer than most people.

  He picked up the blue china cat and his hand slipped down it in an easy and, it suddenly struck him, a familiar gesture. He did it again. Yes, his hand, if not his mind, knew this movement and enjoyed it.

  He did it again and got the same sensation.

  It was a little battered blue china cat of no great value and there was one ear chipped: he hadn’t thought about, probably hadn’t touched it in years, and yet his hand knew it well. Suddenly he knew that this had been a much fingered, much loved object.

  With it came the deep irrational, but utterly certain, conviction that it had been her present. She had given him the blue cat.

  He was stimulated by the pressure of the birthday he was about to enjoy, the presents that were accumulating (Aunt was giving him three warm undervests), and behind them the processions of birthdays he remembered and those he had forgotten.

  Charmian had said to him: When you get one of these memories try to fix it, anchor it to some fact.

  Well, he had anchored it. To the blue china cat.

  He had tried other methods of course, one of which, at least, he would not have cared to mention to Charmian.

  The question was what, if anything, the blue china cat could lead to?

  He picked it up. On the bottom, half effaced, was printed in spidery gilt lettering the word Aylesbury. Whether this referred to the name of the factory or the town was not clear and was unimportant since it was certain that the china cat was not valuable.

  So all the china cat led to was Aylesbury. And what that meant no one knew. He held the little creature in his hand, rubbing it gently between his fingers, to see if any more memories were summoned up. But nothing at all happened and already, as always, the first conviction that it had been her gift was fading. It was always this way. Conviction departed and reason crept in. How could he know? What could he remember? What indeed was there to remember?

  All the same he wrote the word Aylesbury down in the card index he was making at Charmian’s suggestion and cross indexed it with blue china cat. He trusted Charmian and hoped this method of hers (invaluable, so she swore, in detective work) would lead to something. So far the index had precious little in it.

  He regarded Charmian as his best, his only, friend in the adult world. Aunty he loved, as you love someone who has fed you, washed for you, kept you warm and comfortable all you remember of life, but there was almost no communication between them. Except for love they hardly understood each other at all. They were like two dogs locked in separate kennels and barking at each other. The barks conveyed hunger, pain, fear, but nothing more intellectual. Hunger and pain were the only signals Aunty picked up from him; otherwise he was circling in space alone. He felt this loneliness sometimes.

  There was Aunty plugging up the stairs now. He put the cat down quickly.

  ‘I’ve come up with your tablet dear,’ panted Aunty. ‘I think you forgot to take it today.’

  ‘Yes, I believe I did,’ he said absently.

  ‘Here it is then, dear. I’ve brought a glass of water.’

  ‘After all these years,’ he said, ‘I can swallow it without.’

  ‘Good boy,’ she said watching him.

  He tucked his duster in the drawer. No point in hurting Aunty’s feelings. It was part of her creed that men can’t do housework. ‘I don’t know why I have to go on taking the things,’ he grumbled to take her mind off the duster probably. ‘Other people have allergies and don’t take pills like I do.’

  ‘It’s worth it dear,’ she said comfortably; she had seen the duster.

  ‘Joe’s brother has allergies, worse than me, and all he gets are injections once a year,’ he said.

/>   ‘Of course,’ said Aunt triumphantly. ‘He has hay fever. That’s for summer, of course he only needs injections once a year.’

  ‘I must be allergic to something on every single day of the year,’ said Harry, forgetting that he had really started on this to take her mind off the duster, and warming up. It was a grievance that rankled. ‘ The way I take them.’

  ‘You don’t know the trouble I had when you were a little boy,’ said his aunt.

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘No, you don’t remember.’ She turned to go.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said suddenly. He picked up the blue cat. ‘Where did this come from? Do you know?’

  She looked at it. He could see she had dusted it for years now without ever taking it in. ‘That old blue cat?’ She shook her head. ‘I just don’t remember, dear, you can’t expect me to, can you?’

  Harry stood there holding the cat after the door was closed behind her. It felt warm and smooth and faintly sticky.

  And then there came floating up from the depths of his mind, intangible, elusive … Hadn’t there been two of them? Wasn’t there yet another person still, he recalled, and who was now missing? Someone even further back in oblivion?

  Chapter Two

  Charmian had withdrawn her mind, her thoughts from the fire, now apparently a normal, if nasty, affair and turned them squarely onto Harry. She felt better able to think about him now. Charmian very rarely failed to come to terms with what was in her mind and she admitted she didn’t want to come right up and face this problem. There seemed no known reason for this either. Harry was a nice boy with a pleasant, if a little over possessive aunt, and an eccentric grandfather. They talked detectives together. He pretended to be just a little more grown up than he was, and Charmian just a little less. There were aspects to professional detection you didn’t tell to a boy, even a clever reasonable boy of seventeen. And it was there, here, that the area of her uneasiness began. She had felt the probing mind pressing upon hers; it seemed almost as if he wanted to know the limits of unpleasantness to which human nature could go. Placed side by side with this, then, his interest in what he called his missing person had elements in it that she didn’t quite like. To begin with, she wasn’t at all sure she believed in the reality of the woman and she wondered if he really did? What did it represent, this search of his? What did it stand in place of?