The Stranger Came Read online

  'I'll make you a suggestion. There's time enough before Christmas.’ And in an aside to Sophie, 'You were a bit hasty, you know, getting them posted. We'll give it a fortnight and then we'll send your letter out as a follow­ up. Ginger them up a bit. That way nothing's wasted.’ He nodded up at her with a hint of complacency.

  'Oh, you're something,' she said unexpectedly quietly.

  Her rage as she descended on them had been histrionic and seemingly instantaneous. As suddenly as it had blown up, it had dissipated, leaving her yellow and unwell looking.

  'That's such a bad idea for so many reasons.’ With a kind of resentful self-consciousness, she tucked back a wisp of straying hair. 'No way is any letter of mine going out after that bloody shambles of yours. The only consolation is that nobody could think it had anything to do with me. So let's not get anybody confused, just in case. Tell Maitland Ure I won't be writing anything else – not while you work for the Trust.’ Turning away, she added abruptly, 'Never mind! I'll tell him myself.’

  'Whatever you like.’

  Monty Norman raised his glass in an ironical toast to the watching group, but that was a mistake. His eyes returned to Sophie too quickly for her to change the direction of her gaze. The amber liquid slopped to and fro in the glass but instead of putting it down he held it while the trembling slowed. When it stopped, he held out the glass with his arm at full stretch and nodded at the steadiness of his hand.

  With his free hand he pushed the packet of potato sticks across to her.

  'Have one,' he said. 'Before they're finished.’

  Chapter 9

  'He was so angry, I think he could have killed her.’

  'Viv flies off the handle but it doesn't last. I've seen her incandescent and a week later best friends with the victim. If you'd seen the rage, you'd have sworn it was deadly earnest. And permanent.’ He yawned. 'I'll smooth her feathers. It isn't important.’

  The tickle of his breath by her ear accompanied the low comfortable monotone. She had learned that the sweetest time for her came after they had made love. She had not been a virgin when they first went to bed a year ago, but at twenty she had had only two others with whom to compare him. As a first-year student she had been taken against a wall after a party. She had been drunk and giggling. 'Oh, is that your finger? That's only your finger still, isn't it?' Then she had felt the thick pressure of the boy nuzzling his way into her, and that clumsy entry intermingled always in her memory with the sour clogged flow of his breath into her face. In her inexperience, she had no idea of how far in he might be; but she was sobered out of any misapprehension about fingers. Panic stricken, she shoved at him, twisting and writhing away as he grunted with pain. A tall boy with blond hair, he had told her he was Norwegian and at the party had spoken in broken English, encouraging her to say things recklessly in the belief he would not understand. Now out of his mouth in the broadest of Glasgow accents came the words 'Ya cock teasan stupid cunt.’ The first blow stunned her with shock so that the rest followed in a single confusion of pain and terror. Perhaps altogether there were no more than six, delivered with the open hand but each one as a fully swung blow. The slap which put her down took her high on the side of the head, and he caught her with another one as she fell. The whole thing took hardly any time at all; his reflexes were very good. Crouched against the bottom of the wall, she wept with relief as he walked away. In the morning she found blood caked at the side of her mouth, but no show of it on her underwear. Under the circumstances, it was difficult to decide if she had stopped being a virgin. After that she did see him about the campus, and it dismayed her that he gave no sign either of remorse or apprehension. On the other hand, he did not try to approach her and she was grateful for that. She was the one who suffered disgust and even guilt. She lost confidence. She had waking fantasies of giving in to him, of doing whatever he asked, of him leading her into a room of his friends, of her humiliation; but twice she wakened out of dreams in which she had killed him. He lay dead at her feet and she wakened suddenly with a feeling of glory that changed at once into terror. Because her retreat had been into work and hard study – since she was basically very sensible, with a sharp sense of the distinction between fantasy and reality, and an instinct for self-preservation – she did well at the sessional exams; and that helped more than anything. In her second year she developed a social life and, out of a circle of friends, a recognised boyfriend emerged, a diffident redhead immersed in junior honours economics. Urged on by the habit of the time, they arrived in bed together and after several failures made love; and, pleased with themselves, did so on a number of occasions after that, even though by some accident of chemistry the experience for both of them was disappointingly humdrum. All the same, it seemed they were ready to drift out of affection into something they would have called love; but the habit of study had stayed with her from that unhappy first year and at the end of the second she won the class prize. It was this which had drawn her to Maitland's attention.

  'Have you fallen asleep?' Gently he rocked her in the nook of his arm.

  'Dreaming.’ She turned her head and raising herself licked her tongue like a cat along the muscle of his chest. His flesh smelled sweet to her but his taste was salt. 'I dreamt I could eat you.’

  For answer he caught her by the nape and shook her playfully. His grip was powerful and gentle at the same time; he was like a lion. It was a comparison she would have blushed to use aloud, even to him in this intimacy. Least of all to him: she could imagine his shout of laughter; imagine the slyly conscious profile he would offer to her of the romantic hero. She would not risk that he should learn the beginning of despising her. It pleased her in her thoughts that he should be a lion. By the tender kneading grip he had taken of her she let herself be pressed close until, mock menacingly, she worried the hard little button of his nipple between her teeth. After they had made love was the sweetest time for her.

  'But it wasn't her; it was him who was so angry.’ She laid her head on his chest. 'After she went back to her own table, I would have got up and left if I had been him, but he stayed and kept smiling and talking at me. The whole thing made me ravenous and I told him I had to go and eat. But he wouldn't leave – it was so childish. He wouldn't go.’

  'Pride. She had to leave before he would.’

  'As if that would prove anything. Anyway, they were settled in for the evening as far as I could see. Maybe they'd eaten before they came in or maybe they didn't need food as long as they could drink. My God! That crowd could drink. And the place kept getting more and more crowded. It was all smoke and voices and glasses banging down. It began a headache. And every time that gang behind laughed about something – I don't know how to describe it, his face went stiff. And then he'd smile and begin to talk very fast. It got to the stage I'd had enough. I couldn't take any more. I walked out and left him to it.’

  Maitland was amused. 'Poor devil! I don't imagine he's run up against many like Viv in full song.’

  'You didn't see his hand shaking.’

  'A bad case of wounded vanity.’

  'Rage. Apart from his hands he could hide it. But he couldn't stop his hands from shaking.’

  'I wish you'd stayed. I'd dearly like to know what happened after you left.’

  'He told me the next day.’

  '…So?'

  'He outstayed them – after they left, he left.’

  His chest rose and fell, lifting her head on the little coughing spasms of laughter. 'The drama ends in anti-climax.’

  She lifted herself so that she could watch his face. 'He tried to get into my room when he came back.’ He let the last dribble of laughter go and sighed. 'It was late. He tried the door but I'd put the lock on.’

  Maitland rolled away from her and got out of the bed. He had strong shoulders and the muscles on his back tightened as he stretched his arms and yawned. She wanted to touch the hard white rounds of his buttocks. She wanted him to come back to bed; she wanted to take his weight up
on her again. Pulling on his shirt, he said, 'If he was trying the handle of your door after a night's drinking, I shouldn't imagine it was anger that was bothering him.’

  'Is that what was supposed to happen?'

  In the act of buttoning the shirt, his hands stilled. 'That's an interesting tone.’

  She swallowed but went on, 'Was I supposed to let him make love to me?'

  His hands moved again, quickly, fastening the buttons into place. 'It wouldn't have pleased me, no. My tastes are less esoteric.’

  'I don't understand why you brought him here.’

  'I seem to remember, my pet, it was you who told me there was a room available. Because that girl – the one who cluttered up the loo with quack remedies for acne – had gone back to her parents.’ She watched as with deft intent movements he knotted his tie before the mirror. She had a desolate sense of him armouring himself against her. 'Only for something to tell you.’ A scrap of gossip from the meagre area where his life, so full and rich, overlapped with hers. Didn't he understand? 'I never expected – did you put him in here so you would have an excuse to stop seeing me?'

  'I'm here,' he said. 'If I can trust my own sensations, I'm just out of your bed.’

  'Because I asked you to come. When I was sure he wouldn't be here.’

  'Having other people around hasn't bothered you before.’

  'Who was I to worry about? Poor Jackie with her spots? Or Pat and the little bald man? Did you know she comes in here all the time to moan about him?' And she couldn't stop herself, heard her voice offering him another of her poor scraps of gossip. 'She said to me, "He thinks living together means when he says, I'm going to London for the weekend, I run and pack his case.” Were we supposed to be worried by them? Or the Irish boy who's trying to be a painter?'

  'Perhaps we should stop seeing one another, if this isn't fun for you anymore.’

  'Fun!' But now she was in tears. She drew the sheet up over her breasts as if to hide from him, armoured against her in his other existence. She had seen him with the same look; it struck her now, listening to a seminar paper, deciding while he waited for it to end what he would say to get what he wanted.

  'I like risk,' he said. 'Norman being here adds to the fun – adds a little spice.’

  'You make me feel dirty.’

  'Very liberated.’

  'I don't want to be liberated,' Sophie said. 'I don't want you to get up after we make love and walk away from me. I don't want to be left in this terrible room. I don't want to be alone.’

  I want to be married. I want to be married to you.

  She was at the centre of silence. Encompassing her and flowing out from them was the infinite sphere of his stillness, holding them within it, dwindled figurines of male and female, waiting upon change and the event.

  There was no way she would ever give him up. Truth was not something you turned your back on once it had been found. His marriage had failed or why would he need her? She would bring him a new life. Her womb stirred. Whatever she did was for him.

  If she had to fight for her happiness, she would fight.

  Chapter 10

  Maitland had told her, “when he slips down in his seat, right down, that's when I keep my eye on him in the Committee. When he does that, he's passing judgement. Once he's decided what it should be, he delivers it with an upward glance – not the judgement of a moralist de haut en bas – but of an appraiser, you see, an old jurist. Settled down like that, he's weighing actions against consequences. It's a chilly judgement and he passes it on himself as well as others.”

  But perhaps, after all, this judgement was not to be passed on her.

  'Mr Norman had to be out of the office today. And it was only when I was ready to leave, practically out of the door, that May – Mrs Stewart – suggested…'

  She trailed off, under his eye conscious of the muddle she was making of this.

  'Mr Norman doesn't know you are here.’

  She assented. It was what she had been trying to say.

  'In this case, we may say it is jus tertii to him who you may visit before your expedition to the west.’

  Expedition to the west? Of course, she had told him she was on her way to Glasgow. Christ!

  'You understand the term?'

  Expedition? She stared at him puzzled, and then the penny dropped.

  'I gave Latin up at school.’

  'But I thought your degree was in languages.’

  'An ordinary degree.’ Why the hell did she say that? It wasn't the point. 'The classes I did – in linguistics – they were about the grammars of English. Jespersen. Halliday. Chomsky.’

  '"Grammars.”’ Yes, in the plural. She watched him thinking about that; but he was too canny to pursue it. 'The phrase simply means – it doesn't concern him. It's no business of his whether you are here or not.’

  Oddly enough, the exchange eased some of her tension. There had been a friend of her father's, a retired headmaster, who had addressed her in much the same way when she was a girl, ‘Ist der Tee kalt? Don't tell me you have no German? Possibly Italian? A little Hebrew perhaps?’

  ‘Don't be upset by him,’ her mother had said. ‘It's just his way of trying to talk to you. He's never found it easy to communicate with young people.’

  The resemblance, however superficial, however deceptive, comforted her.

  'I assume Mr Norman would see it like that?' Julian Chambers asked.

  'That it wasn't any of his business?' She saw that he was waiting for something further. 'Mostly I get told what to do by Mrs Stewart. Like today, to deliver the proofs for Mr Terence's thesis and the pamphlets for Mrs Gray in connection with the new hospice ward. Not that they couldn't be posted –' and stopped, realising that sounded like a criticism.

  'Mr Norman has no duties for you?'

  'He hasn't been there very long.’

  'Three weeks and two days.’ With a bony knuckled finger he stroked back one leaf of the desk diary.

  'I did think there would be more for me to do with him there...He seemed to have a lot of ideas.’

  'But in the event not so many after all.’

  Was this why May Stewart had packed her off today; so that she could be questioned about Monty Norman? Sophie decided on caution. 'He's – it's not really very long.’

  She was unpleasantly conscious of the old lawyer's high pale brow. His thinning white hair drawn back fiercely from it accentuated its height. Because he sat so low in his seat, she could see the shine of his scalp, the skin of it by contrast gleaming pink and healthy. He must really be a very healthy old man with that pink gleaming scalp and the flexible spine of a boy that let him slump like that and gaze up so steadily at her. She wondered what age he was in fact. Seventy? But if someone had told her eighty she would have believed them.

  'You know how much a scandal would damage the Trust?' he asked.

  A flush like guilt went through her.

  'Reputation is a fragile commodity,' he said. 'Made over years, lost in days.’

  There was nothing she could offer to that.

  'You came to the Trust through a recommendation from Maitland.’

  'Professor Ure. Yes.’

  'Maitland.’

  His insistence on the name troubled her. Such informality must be uncharacteristic.

  'Mrs Stewart seems satisfied with what I do,' Sophie said. 'I think we get on well together.’

  Julian Chambers frowned. It is as if, she thought, anything I say is only an interruption.

  'When the Trust began, there was a difficulty. The elder Rintoul – Lucy's grandfather that is – Lucy, Mrs Ure? …yes – he was a self-made man, and self-taught too, but his prosperity was founded on patents; he was a brilliant engineer. By contrast, Charles Gregory was a surgeon, and a very distinguished one. Different professions and so different objects in their philanthropy. Logically, separate trusts would have been the simplest answer. But they were friends. They wanted their names to be linked. As it was drawn up at first, th
eir charitable purposes were stated disjunctively and the problems that error created might well have seen the Trust extinguished before it was properly started.’

  He looked at her as if to say, You see? But, of course, she did not.

  'A direction of that kind can become void for uncertainty since it would allow trustees to favour one object to the exclusion of the other – assuming that is they are truly alternative, and certainly Gregory's medical philanthropy and Rintoul's desire to encourage industrial innovation were. Hardly could be more obviously so.’

  Not being a fool, she had begun to follow; but what she could not see was why he should be explaining all this for her benefit.

  'That was corrected – the disjunction – and both objects became and have remained legitimate concerns of the Trust. The coming of the National Health Service, however, wasn't something Gregory had foreseen. The Trust invoked the cy pres principle and the Inner House of the Court of Session found for us. That let us go on, you see, in the spirit of what Gregory intended, to meet situations of which he had no cognisance. We took a very early interest in the hospice movement. As the years pass, I begin to think of it as the best part of our work.’

  He paused and drew his lips together as if annoyed with himself over an indiscretion; and that made her realise. Being old is what he's thinking about. Being ill and old and needing help in learning how to die.

  'By its very nature, Rintoul's desire to further innovation meant movement in the objects of benefaction.’ He made a face, involuntarily it seemed, as if the idea of necessarily implied change was distasteful. 'Like Mr Terence's thesis there, computers for the blind, the talking terminal, what pleasure it would have given those two friends to find the really rather ill-matched objects of their philanthropy coming together in that way.’

  There was a pause which went on until she ventured, 'It's very interesting,' and understood from the blankness of his stare that this was not the point.