The Stranger Came Read online

  'I wondered,' she said diffidently, 'if there would be any problem about my attending the Trust meeting next Wednesday.’

  He stared blankly, looking his age in that mild confusion, until recovering he said, 'A place for you is there at any of our meetings. Of right, as it were.’ He reflected. 'Is Maitland unwell? If there is some point he wishes to be covered, I could present it. There wouldn't be any need for you to trouble yourself.’

  'He'll be there. It's just that I'd like to be there too.’

  At a loss, he frowned. 'Then there's something that ...’ A shadow of irritability clouded his gallantry.

  'When I think of my father,' she said, 'I feel I should have been more involved. But Maitland was there and I felt I would hardly be missed – not while Maitland was there.’

  'You say he'll be there on Wednesday. He's well enough? Yes…But you'd like to be present also.’

  'My father put so much of himself into the Trust.’

  It was all she had to offer, and his acceptance of it as some kind of explanation would allow her also to be satisfied. 'As of right'; she had a right to be there; that's what he had said.

  'Your father would have been older than I, if he had been spared. I find that strange. When I think of him, I think of a young man – so filled with energy and purpose.’ He sighed. 'The war killed him though he survived it. As it did so many others – so many of those who died in the nineteen fifties. They should have put “Killed in Action” on their graves. It would have been more honest. All part of the price this country paid.’

  She remembered his wife was dead, but found she had no memory of his children, whether he had any or what had become of them. 'The Trust owes so much to you.’

  'It went down after your father's death – even before Gregory went off to Australia. I did my best for your father's sake, but I was working hard to build up the practice in those years. I hardly ever saw Emily or the girls. It seemed the right thing to do, at the time.’ He paused, and then began again as if remembering what he had intended to say. 'Maitland's made the difference.’ He directed a fresh look of speculation upon her. 'You'll find our meetings are very much a matter of routine. There isn't anything coming up of particular interest.’

  'It's a matter of…staffing,' she said. Of course, that was why.

  The old man jerked his hand up as if to constrain her to silence. A touch of red dabbed each cheek. 'Oh, dear,' he said. 'The Trust still has a role to play. There's plenty for it still to do.’

  She was perplexed. 'Of course, there is.’

  'That's why there mustn't be any breath of scandal.’

  'Scandal?'

  'I can't believe,' Julian Chambers leaned forward, bent the height of his age to her, 'that there could be any satisfaction in the longer term, however real the injury. Another way of dealing with things? And, in any case, there's more to be said for salvaging than destroying, and that's an opinion derived from a lifetime of witnessing such matters. A relationship has so much of value that is lost sight of in the heat of the moment. Concentrate on what is of value, however real the injury. However real the injury.’

  The dry passion of his tone rose and ceased. 'I'm terribly sorry,' Lucy said. For what? This stupid compulsion to apologise; laughter tickled her and escaped. At the expression on the old man's face, disgracefully it increased. 'I'm sorry,' she gasped. 'I really am so dreadfully sorry.’

  'Now!' he warned and rose from his seat.

  Dimly she apprehended the notion that his code of the necessary might accommodate a slap to the cheek of a hysterical woman. For his sake more than her own, she struggled for control, afraid that the slap administered would tax him beyond the bounds of their long acquaintance.

  'I can't imagine what's wrong with me,' she managed and hiccuped. 'It's just that I don't know what you're talking about.’

  'There was never any intention of forcing a confidence,' he said and, to her further surprise, as if she had offended him.

  'But it's all right. I mean if there's anything I can tell you about Mr Norman. If you feel it might help you to decide,' she said.

  'Decide? Decide what, what is there to decide?'

  'About the post with the Trust. I met him, you see. He stayed with us.’

  'He's to be offered a post? Mr Norman, is that the name?'

  'But I assumed you knew.’

  'Not a word. And this is why – only this – nothing else?' He pulled at his lip. She remembered that with him as a gesture of doubt. What on earth was there in what she had said to disbelieve? The unwanted laughter stirred, and as she pressed her lips together holding it in, she saw his expression alter as he watched her.

  Ridiculous even only for a moment to feel surrounded by mysteries. Ridiculous to feel afraid. Yet it did seem, if only for a moment, as if for nothing more than the accident of a moment's laughter, that this old dry man might hate her.

  Chapter 4

  On the Monday morning, two days before the Trust meeting was due, restless and out of sorts she took herself into Balinter for lunch. She hesitated outside the restaurant Maitland usually took her to and then wandered on until almost out of the small town centre she found a wine bar that was new to her. She began to eat, a pizza with half a pint of light lager to go with it, and then found she had no appetite. A sign pointed her down a flight of steps. There was a telephone booth, the standard street model of an earlier time but painted blue, set up solid and improbable outside the ladies' lavatory. It seemed to her like an item of camp decoration and she was surprised when a tug opened the door. The little mirror inside distorted her face in its coarse grain. The phone was still there and a coin box, and when she took up the receiver the waiting note of an open line buzzed in her ear. She could not think of anyone to phone and put the receiver back down, feeling silly and glad there was no one to see her. The squares of glass divided outside into framed segments of emptiness trying to make up a room: a table with an unlit candle stuck in the neck of a bottle, blue red yellow squashed together in gaudy prints, the bottom steps of the flight that went up to the ground floor. She avoided the eyes of the face in the mirror. The Tardis was a police box not a telephone box and it shimmered and vanished and that meant it had flown off with you into some other part of the universe. Inside this box it was quiet. She listened to her breath and wondered, if the phone rang, would she pick it up?

  The train jolted to a halt, clanked forward and settled to rest. Isolated flakes of snow swam past the windows. Across the tracks a black dog was chasing its tail. It chased it into a yard, spinning and lunging one way and then the other. The train began to move; she turned her head straining to keep the dog in view until the last possible moment. It rippled like a stick along a fence, the iron strokes of railings herding it back out of her sight into the past.

  Maitland would not be home for dinner, a meeting or something; as so often lately, he would be dining out. A train to the city, then, why shouldn't she? Afterwards a train back to Balinter and catch the last bus.

  In Edinburgh a lid of clouds pressed down on the roofs and the wind chilled and hurried her along. She studied the bright dressed spaces of store windows, but felt no desire to go inside. The pedestrian precinct in the lane above Princes Street was swept almost bare of life, although it was only early afternoon. The wind raked along its length and blew a man like a pencil smudge from one side to the other and erased him in a doorway. In the window of a travel agent, sand and blue sea, a brown girl stretching up to catch the sun; she was at the entry which led up to the offices of the Gregory and Rintoul Trust. She stared at the brass plate, seeing the name as if for the first time.

  The staircase had been painted yellow, which came as a surprise. On the first floor there was an insurance office. Had that been here before? On the second, two blank closed doors. She went more slowly, confidence ebbing as she climbed.

  There was a passage beyond the Trust entrance with a toilet and a storeroom and then round the corner a short corridor with three more
doors behind which were the offices proper. The whole suite had been gifted just after the war by a friend of her father's, a businessman whose son had died in the fighting round Cannes. For a time, money left by him had met the rates and gone to defray the annual phone bill; more than anything, the gift had kept the Trust going in its worst years. Now everyone spoke of inflation. Her thoughts touched lightly upon Monty Norman – someone who would raise money – wasn't that so?

  She opened the first door, but instead of being Mrs Stewart's office it was a larger room with an oval table occupying the middle of the floor. Bundles of folders were lined up in neat rows on top of it. In the passage again, the remaining doors were of plain wood and without glassed. A plate was screwed to the upper panel of the second, however, a little thing easy to miss: “M. E. Stewart, Administrative Secretary”, and now from inside came the unexpected sound of laughter. As she stretched out her hand, the door opened away from her, a young woman swung out, broke step, and was past and off.

  'Can I help you?' It was a tall older woman with pale fine-drawn features, rising from behind a desk. 'This is the Gregory and Rintoul Trust. Have you been in touch with us? Are you in the right place?'

  'It's Mrs Stewart, isn't it?' Having found her voice, Lucy was relieved by its firmness. 'I'm Professor Ure's wife.’ How else should she describe herself?

  'How awful of me! Now, to be fair, it has been such a long time.’ With a shepherding gesture, she gathered Lucy into the office and called out into the corridor, 'Sophie, be a dear, would you? Make coffee and bring it through. Would you do that, please?'

  Sophie?

  Settled again behind her desk, Mrs Stewart summoned a look of enquiry. As the silence lengthened, Lucy felt her face crumple into a smile. Mrs Stewart responded and then returned to being puzzled. They avoided one another's eye. At last the girl appeared with the coffees carried on a tin tray with a motif of pink flowers. It was odd, Lucy thought, the things that caught one's attention.

  'I'm afraid they've both been milked – is that all right? Sure? She could fetch another.’

  The girl had hesitated, perhaps expecting to be introduced, but now as the cup was finally handed over Lucy heard the door click shut behind her.

  'Sugar, then?'

  'My husband nagged me until I stopped.’

  'I can imagine,' Mrs Stewart said, 'that it would be difficult to refuse the Professor once he had set his heart on something.’

  'Oh, it was quite long ago,' Lucy said vaguely.

  Mrs Stewart became busy setting the tray to one side. 'None of us take sugar, you see, and so when we have a visitor that's when sometimes we find we're out, completely out. Oh, but biscuits? We certainly have those!'

  Lucy shook her head. 'I was passing. I shouldn't be keeping you from your work.’

  'We have a break about now. In the afternoon. We get through the work all the same.’

  God! Lucy thought, I'm not criticising. By a kind of reflex, she wondered how efficient Mrs Stewart was.

  'I'm coming to the meeting on Wednesday, you see. And so I thought I would look in. Find my way, after such a long time.’

  'But Professor Ure will be coming?'

  She had heard that note in too many other voices to mistake it. She added Mrs Stewart to the number of Maitland's devotees.

  'Oh, it's not that he won't be there.’

  'But there's something which interests you?'

  Julian Chambers had asked the same question. As for rights, who had more right than she to be at a meeting of the Trust? She was the last surviving Rintoul. Whatever her reason, she had the right. 'Perhaps there's an agenda you could let me have?'

  'Professor Ure will have received one. They go out to let the Committee prepare.’

  'For myself. I'd like one for myself.’

  'Of course.’

  Lucy tried to take in the detail of the items. None of it meant much to her. There was no mention of Monty Norman or the plan to create a new appointment.

  'The yellow sheet is the agenda. The blue ones give background information on matters that will come up. We've found that helpful. The minutes of the previous meeting are on the white sheets. The paragraphs are numbered for ease of reference.’

  'I'll read it – read them all.’

  'I can give you the minutes of the meeting before the last one. Would you want those?'

  'No – please.’

  Mrs Stewart who had sketched an intention of getting up again settled back. 'The Professor has them all, of course. If there was anything.’

  'I shouldn't have time. These will keep me busy.’

  They sipped coffee and made some kind of conversation. When there was no more to say, or rather when the effort to fill that lack became too great, they ended it. Mrs Stewart walked her to the head of the stairs.

  Halfway down the flight, Lucy turned back. In the corridor of the Trust suite, she listened at the secretary's door for voices or laughter. There was the sound of a phone ringing and stopping almost at once as if it had been lifted. With a light hasty step, she went back to the first door and not giving herself time to think opened it and went inside.

  The girl was tidying the bundles of papers set out on the long table. She did not seem surprised to see Lucy.

  'Is it in here the meeting is to be held? Of the Committee, I mean.’

  The girl cross-hatched one bundle on to another. 'Yes. But all of this stuff will be cleared away by then.’

  'We'll sit at this table?' The girl didn't say anything, perhaps since the answer was obvious. 'Are there enough chairs?'

  'We bring them in from next door,' the girl said, smiling as if the question amused her. Methodically she went on arranging the bundles.

  'I'm interrupting.’

  'This is the old leaflet – telling about the work the Trust does. Soon, though, we're going to have a campaign to coincide with Christmas. They haven't – we haven't done it before but it seems worth trying. Get in touch with social clubs in factories and offices, places like that. Part of the difficulty will be in getting them targeted ­– to the right people that is. I've been phoning a sample finding which person would be most likely to help.’ She said all this pleasantly but with her attention on what she was doing, politely abstracted, terribly busy. Now she laughed. 'Luckily part of the phone bill gets paid for us. Just as well!'

  It seemed strange to Lucy that this girl should be explaining the work of the Trust to her. 'My grandfather – I mean, my father – it was his friend…' She trailed off.

  'I know. Rintoul. I mean, that's you, isn't it?'

  No, Lucy wanted to say, not just Rintoul. Ure. I'm Professor Ure's wife. But that might have made the girl smile again. Instead, she asked, 'Have you worked here for very long?'

  'Not really.’

  'You speak so knowledgeably.’

  'I'm an enthusiast,' the girl said.

  'It's Miss Lindgren, isn't it? You are Miss Lindgren?'

  Her own question took her by surprise. She had not intended to ask.

  'I didn't like to remind you,' Miss Lindgren said. 'We met at the station. Professor Ure introduced us.’

  'My husband.’

  'Yes.’

  'I had no idea you were with the Trust. Didn't you say you were a student? It's not vacation time.’ Premonitions of pain stirred in her head and she touched her hand to the place, and then realising what she was doing snatched it away as if it was a confession of weakness. The girl watched her interestedly. 'Sorting out letters. Surely this can't be much of a job. Couldn't you find something better?'

  'The thing is, I identify,' Sophie Lindgren said. 'I really like to get involved. I couldn't bear a job that was just a job.’

  Outside, the grey afternoon dazzled her with its light. She stumbled blindly forward until a hard edge of concrete struck her across the thighs. Leaning for support, she ground her knuckles against her forehead. The warning signs told her that soon she would be in pain. The pain would come. Beer cans and cigarette packets
littered the frozen earth in the concrete tub, and a shrub shook its sticks in the icy wind. If the lid of the sky rolled back hands would reach down for her. Fingers like claws, probes, levers to open-

  A face like wet grey cloth pressed itself almost into hers. All curiosity over a mouth gathered in the ugliness of contempt, it reduced her to one of the women who were despised for blabbering their memories and fears to the indifferent street. Then she saw there were other watchers, three walking youths, the wind pulling at their hair and thin jackets, watching her while she gaped at the blank sky, possessing her with their eyes, her weakness, her folly.

  As if he had come out of a poster of the sun, the man stepped from the doorway beside the travel agents.

  'It's my impression you were supposed to be here before this,' he said. 'It's all right though. I can see you're not well. We'll go back to my place.’

  The dry branches rattled and she was more afraid than ever, until she remembered a voice promising her that nothing was certain.

  Not even the coming of pain.

  Chapter 5

  Rain during the night had removed the last of the snow from the fields and on the Wednesday morning the sky was as high and blue and shiny as if it had been polished for the occasion.

  'You are actually coming,' Maitland said. 'Not that you haven't a perfect right to –'

  Perhaps she had taken so little to do with the work of the Committee because her entitlement had nothing to do with what she could bring to it, but only with being her father's daughter. The mild ironical thought occurred to her that if men had the same scruple half the boardrooms in the country would be empty. But, of course, there had been Maitland; so, anyway, she had not been needed.

  She was surprised by the outskirts of the city.

  'Are you driving too fast?'