Endpeace. Jon Cleary

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СКАЧАТЬ was never sure whether she had been born with a sharp eye, had acquired it as a diplomat’s secretary or had learned it from Scobie: whichever, she did not miss Nigel’s warning glance. ‘You must tell me about it. Later.’

      ‘Oh, we’ll do that,’ said his wife. ‘Voices will be heard.’

      ‘They may even be strident,’ said Cordelia. ‘But we mustn’t puzzle Mrs Malone with family problems. Do you have children?’

      ‘Three. Eighteen, fifteen and thirteen. Two girls and a boy. So far, thank God, giving us no problems.’

      ‘Lucky you,’ said Cordelia. ‘I hope it stays that way. How’s Mother Dragon?’ she said to Nigel.

      ‘Starting to yawn openly.’

      ‘She always does. She has a patent on the open yawn.’

      Lisa couldn’t help herself: she giggled. Both Cordelia and Brenda looked at her and smiled widely, as if pleased that an outsider had seen a family joke. But neither said anything and Nigel, covering hastily, turned the conversation off at right angles.

      Malone, abruptly left out of a sudden conversation between Sheila and Bentsen, excused himself and headed for the door. Sir Harry, after a final pat of Gloria Bentsen, this time on her attractive knee, rose and followed him. ‘Going, Mr Malone?’

      ‘Soon, Sir Harry. But first I’d like to use the bathroom.’

      ‘There’s a lavatory off the library.’ The old-fashioned word brought a grin to Malone’s lips. His mother was the only other person he knew who talked of the lavatory instead of the toilet or the loo. ‘This way.’

      The library was a big room with the high ceiling that the rest of the ground floor of the house seemed to possess. It was the sort of room Malone saw in films and, secretly, yearned for; for some reason he had never confessed the yearning to anyone, even Lisa. In a room like this he would gather together all the books he had let slip by him, would wrap himself in the education that Lisa had and he had missed, would listen to the music that his heart would understand but that his ear had yet to interpret. He wondered if Sir Harry, with all his advantages, would understand his yearning.

      A leather-covered door was let into a wall of books; Sir Harry gestured at it and Malone went in, under a complete set of Winston Churchill, for a piss. When he came out Sir Harry was standing at the tall bow-window that looked out on to the tiny bay and beyond that to the harbour. The only lighting in the dark brown room came from a brass lamp on the wide leather-topped desk. When Sir Harry turned back to face Malone, he looked suddenly much older in the yellow glow. The lines in his face had become gullies, the eyes had no gleam in them.

      ‘A good piss is one of life’s little pleasures.’ Even his smile looked ghastly. Then he sat down at the desk, there was more light on his face and he suddenly appeared less frail. ‘Were you and my son Derek ever close, Mr Malone?’

      ‘Scobie ... No, not really. We got on well, but there was the age difference. In sport six years is quite a gap. He’d been playing for five or six years before I got into the State team. We weren’t real professionals back then, none of us earned the money they do these days.’

      ‘I don’t think Derek ever gave a thought to what he earned as a cricketer.’

      ‘He could afford not to.’

      The old man accepted the rebuke. ‘Sorry. So you and he were not close?’

      ‘Not as bosom friends, no. He was my – well, I guess my mentor.’

      Sir Harry nodded. ‘He was always good at that. Mentoring, or whatever the verb is. Except with his siblings.’

      That was another old-fashioned word that, unlike lavatory, had come back into fashion. Malone, having no siblings, could think of nothing to say and, as he often did in interrogations, stood and waited. The old man seemed not to notice his silence; he went on, ‘What’s your heritage, Scobie?’

      The question made Malone pause; he could not remember ever having been asked it before. ‘Not much, I’m afraid. I’ve never bothered to trace the family further back than my grandparents. And even that far back I’m in the dark on a lot of things.’ Including my own mother’s early life; or anyway her early love. ‘I’m of Irish descent, the name tells you that. I guess all I’ve really inherited, if I knew about it, is a lot of pain and trouble. That’s Ireland, isn’t it?’

      ‘It doesn’t seem to have affected you. On the surface.’

      ‘Maybe it’s because I don’t think too much about it. Maybe I should.’

      Sir Harry shook his head. ‘If you don’t have to, don’t. Heritage, I’m beginning to think, is like history – it’s bunk. Henry Ford, one of history’s worst philosophers, said that. But perhaps, who knows, he had a point.’ He had an occasional stiff way of putting his thoughts into words, as if he were writing an editorial. Then he smiled and stood up. ‘I’d like you to come again, Scobie. I don’t get to talk enough to –’ Then he smiled again, without embarrassment. ‘I was going to say the common folk. Does that offend you?’

      ‘I’m a republican, Sir Harry. We’re all common folk.’

      ‘You must debate some time with my wife. She’s a monarchist through and through. At Runnymede she would have been on side with King John. You’ve heard of Magna Carta?’

      There it was again, the arrogance: unwitting, perhaps in Sir Harry’s case, but endemic. ‘They were still teaching English history when I was at school. I had to study it in a plain brown wrapper, so my father wouldn’t throw a fit. He hates the Brits.’

      ‘Perhaps you should bring him here to debate with my wife.’

      ‘Are you a monarchist, Sir Harry?’ All at once Malone was interested in the older man, wanted to put him in front of the video recorder in one of the interrogation rooms at Homicide. Take him apart, perhaps take a hundred and fifty years of Huxwoods apart. This family, this man, had wielded influence that had toppled governments, that had sent young men to a war they didn’t believe in, that had, in various ways, influenced the running of the force in which Malone himself served.

      ‘Mr Malone, I fear that all my beliefs, whatever they were, have somehow turned to water.’ Then abruptly it seemed that he had revealed enough of himself: ‘Shall we rejoin the others?’

      They went out into the wide tessellated hallway. A curving staircase went up to the first floor, its polished walnut banister following it like a python heading for the upper galleries of a rain-forest. Four of the family stood in the hallway: Derek, Nigel, Sheila and Linden. Halfway up the staircase Lady Huxwood had paused, stood with one hand on the banister and stared down at her children. Malone, the outsider, unconnected to whatever demons were stirring in the family, was struck with a sudden image: he had seen it all before on some late night movie, The Magnificent Ambersons or The Little Foxes, Bette Davis or some other over-the-top actress pouring venom from a great height.

      ‘You deserve nothing, none of you! I should have aborted the lot of you!’

      Then she went on up the stairs, paused on the gallery that ran round the upper level of the hallway and looked back down into the pit. Malone waited for another spit of spite, was surprised when she looked directly at him and snapped, ‘Goodnight, Mr Malone. I’m sure you won’t come again.’

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