The Lively Dead Read online

  “She’s been getting a bit dusty,” said Lalage. “We’re thinking of buying a non-stick elephant. Have you anything in that line?”

  “Only non-stick hippo … hippo …”

  Dickie broke down before he could finish the word.

  “Well, bring one up,” said Lalage. “Don’t bust the lift, though.”

  The door buzzed and opened. In the lift Dickie bounced and thrilled, mercifully unable to sense Lydia’s inner shrinking. Lalage was holding the flat door open and he hurtled through it, yelling “Boom, Boom, Kiss me Hardy, Boom, Boom.”

  “Boom, boom,” answered Father’s voice from the old nursery.

  Even in those two syllables Lydia sensed that he was the kindly old scholar this visit. Dickie hurtled through the nursery door.

  “Men!” yawned Lalage. “How are you, darling. You look marvellous. I’ve got a new job.”

  “That’s great,” said Lydia, relaxing. It was going to be an easy visit, with plenty to talk about and both Father and Lalage in bearable roles. By the time she’d hung her coat on her own peg in the passage Lalage was on the sofa in the drawing room, sprawling luxuriously among the cushions. Lydia settled into her usual small, hardish, constricting chair, opened the sewing-box beside it and took out the tapestry stool-cover that had already seen her through two years of first-Sundays-in-the-month.

  “What’s the job?”

  “London correspondent of a New York glossy business mag. Six thousand a year plus three thousand expenses.”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  “Can’t you be a bit jealous, darling, just to put the cream on my cake.”

  “But I couldn’t begin to do a job like that, let alone like doing it. It’s the same as that stupid question about which past age would you prefer to live in. I live now, and that’s part of me being me. To live then I’d have to be someone else. To do your job I’d have to be someone else. I’m me, and I like it.”

  Lydia threaded her needle with mauve silk and began to stitch in another line of background between the two stunted chaffinches which were the main feature of the design. It really was becoming gratifyingly hideous. Lalage stretched on the sofa, thinking about money, sensual as Danae under her storm of gold. Lydia stopped stitching and mentally compared her half-sister’s prettiness with Procne Newbury’s beauty. Lalage’s complexion was almost as good, and was set off by her glossy black hair. Her features were small and well-formed too; but there was something deficient in the soft, clear oval of her face, an absence of character, not because Lalage lacked character but because she didn’t allow it to appear on the surface to spoil the pretty image. Whereas Procne was her own beauty, all through.

  “Have you got anything I can wear at a big embassy reception?” asked Lydia.

  “Jesus! Which embassy?”

  “Russia.”

  “I’m not lending you my best new Cardin to get all ripped up when you’re chucked out. What’s it about this time? Exit visas for Jews?”

  Lydia laughed.

  “I did wonder whether I oughtn’t to,” she said. “But I’ve promised Richard I’ll behave. I’ll promise you too, if you like.”

  “Then why are you going at all? You?”

  “Oh, it’s perfectly stupid. Richard has a friend called George Dunakhov—I like him too—he’s like somebody in a Chekhov farce—we knew him when we were at the embassy in Buda and now he’s in London and he’s got us invited to a big cultural do. In fact I threw the envelope away without opening it, because I thought it was an ad for some shoe-shop or something, but then I fished it out of the wastepaper basket because I needed a bit of card to draw a diagram for a rather thick electrician, and there was this absurd invitation, with a note from George, and at that moment he rang up to check I’d got it. I hadn’t time to think of an excuse, and anyway Richard’s a bit starved of that sort of function. So what have you got I can wear?”

  “Let’s go and try a few things on,” said Lalage.

  They spent almost an hour doing that, while the gunfire of Trafalgar thundered in the nursery and faint whiffs of gunpowder crept under the door to mix with the boudoir odours of Lalage’s room.

  Tea went very well. Afterwards Dickie decided to watch TV and let Lydia enjoy the privilege of clearing up the battle of Trafalgar. Father, with his characteristic fussy precision, put away his beautifully painted little Airfix models while Lydia swept up the remains of expendable paper ships (Father was very proud of his exploding Bucentaur), tidied away the fans which provided the prevailing winds, hoovered the canvas sea and finally rolled it up to expose the old, familiar-stained brown nursery carpet.

  “I want a bit of help,” she said abruptly.

  “Cash?” said Father, sickeningly understanding. “I’m fairly flush just now.”

  This was recognised family code, and meant that he wasn’t spending every penny he earned on some girl with a taste for Ferraris, Krug and the Bahamas.

  “No, we’re doing OK, thanks,” said Lydia. “I’ve got a new tenant who’s paying more for one room than some of them are for four. I want some advice, really.”

  “Good God!”

  “I want to know something about a particular post mortem …”

  “Which hospital?”

  “St Ursula’s.”

  “Might be able to help. I know Crichton-Powell there. What’s up?”

  “You remember about the old woman who died in my house? The evidence at the inquest was pretty straightforward—she had a lot of alcohol in her bloodstream and she’d been climbing up on a table to do something to the curtains when she fell and hit her head on the corner of the fender. I want to know whether there’s any way of telling how long she’d been drinking for, and also whether there was any other possible interpretation of the evidence.”

  “Umm—this sounds a bit paranoid, my dear.”

  “It’s not for me. I’m visiting her daughter in prison, and she’s absolutely convinced that her mother would never have touched alcohol. I want to get her to accept the facts before she becomes paranoid. There’s another thing—the old lady left a bit of money behind, and I think there’s a chance she’d been cheating her employers out of the booze. It would suit me if she’d only just begun drinking, because that would mean that they hadn’t much claim on the money and it could all go to the girl.”

  “Umm. I do a stint at St Ursula’s on Tuesdays. I can’t guarantee to bump into Crichton-Powell, but I’ll probably do so before next month. What are the details—name, address and date ought to be enough.”

  “Mrs Daphne Newbury, my address, died on the night of the 31st of January.”

  Father was half-way through writing this into his little black pocket-book when his good-samaritan face slipped, creased and became inquisitive and roguish as he turned to stare at her.

  “Not little Procne’s Mamma?” he said.

  “That’s right,” she snapped.

  He pursed his lips, head cocked, speculative. Lydia swallowed.

  “Did you know her?” she said.

  “We had quite a bit of fun together, once, but then she moved out of my class. How is she?”

  “Prison is hell. You can’t ask how people in hell are, especially if you helped put them there. But I hope she’s going to come and live at Devon Crescent when she gets out.”

  It was a momentary comfort to see him shocked. It may be amusing, even delightful, for randy old cynics to consort with harlots, but it is certainly improper for the daughters of the cynics to invite harlots into their houses.

  “You asked me for some advice, my girl,” he said. “I’m going to give you some. Steer clear of Procne Newbury.”

  “I like her.”

  “Perhaps. In my experience Procne has no moral sense at all.”

  “Balls!”

  “But I have heard it argued that the question
whether she has any moral sense is subsumed into the large question whether she has sense of any kind. She’s not merely impulsive—she’s an embodied impulse.”

  “You simply can’t judge somebody like that by the way somebody like you knows them.”

  “Perhaps. I told you she’d moved out of my class. That was only partly true. What really put me off was that she moved in with a group of people I find very frightening indeed. Genuine, hard, violent criminals. There are some men who get an extra kick out of that sort of thing. Not me.”

  “She didn’t move in with them, she was taken over by them. And how’s she ever going to get away from them if there’s nowhere for her to go to and no one else she knows?”

  “Well, I’ve said my piece.”

  “OK. Now shut up!”

  He sighed and stooped. Grey-hairs-with-sorrow-to-the-grave. Lydia sensed the old appalling useless rage beginning to thresh round and round inside her, battering against the walls of her being like the dying king cobra in Rikki-tikki-tavi. At the crisis moment Dickie hurtled into the room brandishing his grandfather’s best ebony walking stick.

  “Have at you, fat varlet!” he cried, and thwacked his grandfather on the knee.

  “Toothache!” he yelled.

  “It’s been The Three Musketeers on the box,” said Lalage from the door. “Sometimes he makes me realise how much I’ve missed, being a girl. I’ve often longed to do that. Are you all right, darling?”

  “By God, I’ve lost my leg!” gritted Father.

  “So you have, by God!” squealed Dickie. “Stand up, Guards! Hard pounding, gentlemen—we’ll see who can pound hardest. Boom! Boom!”

  He fell on one knee and began to load the walking-stick with an invisible ram-rod. Father lowered himself into a chair and rubbed his knee-cap. Lalage leaned against the door-post, laughing soundlessly with all her teeth showing. Lydia stood by the window, completely left out, unable even to enjoy Dickie’s whirling happiness. Dickie himself in the act of spitting a musket-ball down the barrel of the walking-stick suddenly remembered the other battlefield and reverted to D’Artagnan.

  “My turn,” said Father, holding out his hand for the lunging stick. “The defeated army needs its crutch to hobble home on.”

  “Cut it off? Boiling Tar?” asked Dickie.

  “May not be necessary,” said father. “On the other hand, next time you come I might be wearing a peg leg. Time for you to go, isn’t it? I’ll find out about your old lady, my dear.”

  “Thanks,” said Lydia.

  “Goodness, I enjoyed that,” said Lalage. “Don’t forget the dress, darling—I really ought to give it you, it suits you so well. Look, if I come and collect it some time next week I can see how you’re getting on with your upheavals.”

  The last wash of rage receded. Lydia remembered Richard’s idiotic suggestion.

  “Come and have supper,” she said. “I’ll give you a ring. I’ve got a handsome young ship-owner I’d like you to meet.”

  It was foolishly gratifying to watch Lalage’s eyes widen.

  Chapter 13

  Lydia’s second visit to the prison was rather different from the first. It had taken considerable persistence to persuade the authorities to let her come at all, as she was neither a relation nor a technically acceptable visitor. She had kept her cool, recognising that the problem was not official bloody-mindedness, or even lack of goodwill, but just the blind intransigence of the system. However, as Procne had no other visitors, and as Lydia persisted until even the system dimly recognised that she wasn’t going to go away, here she was again, waiting in the crowded octagonal room by the gate, feeling almost an old hand.

  But the wait was longer than before, and then she was taken not to the pink cell but to a larger room which contained a number of long tables with chairs on either side—something like a library reading-room without any books. Most of the places were occupied by other visitors and other prisoners. Two prison officers invigilated the scene. The room was full of muttering which, even though the words were inaudible, seemed to move in stilted rhythms.

  Procne was already waiting, wearing a neutral-coloured overall. She was obviously the prettiest girl in the room (though there was one thin, tiny-headed black girl who might have collected a few votes) but Lydia didn’t feel this time as though she was in the presence of something amazing, a different order of creation from all the other people she knew.

  “Hi,” said Lydia. “How’s things?”

  “Hi, Liz. Good of you to come.”

  “I had a bit of trouble persuading them. If you want me to go on coming you’ve got to ask. You look as though it’s been getting you down a bit.”

  “Get anyone down. I been sleeping badly.”

  “Is that worry?”

  “Nothing to worry about in here, have I? No, it’s just being shut up like this you might as well be dead. Being asleep and being dead’s not much different, really. So I don’t need the sleep, see?”

  “Are you eating OK?”

  “Not so bad. But the food! It’s not disgusting, like, only it’s dead boring, always the same. I used to eat a lot of scampi. First thing I’ll do when I get out is to go and buy myself a bloody great plate of scampi.”

  She fell silent. The mild animation which the imagined taste had raised waned from her features.

  “You’ll be able to afford it,” said Lydia. “I found the money your mother left.”

  “Did you really? That’s great I”

  “It’s a bit over a thousand pounds.”

  “Great! Hey, are you sure she meant it for me?”

  “There’s nothing to show she didn’t. I put it in the Post Office in my name, because that seemed easiest, but you can have it as soon as you want.”

  “You haven’t told anyone, have you?” said Procne in a whisper.

  “No, of course not. Why?”

  “Perhaps if the police found out they’d want it back, pay for them cheques.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. It was your mother’s money, not yours.”

  “It come from me. Besides …”

  Her eyes flicked to either side and when she spoke again her voice was even lower.

  “That mob I was telling you about, they wouldn’t like it. If I got a bit put by they might think I was trying to get shot of them, see? They keep an eye on what their best girls are doing. There was one of them at my trial, most days.”

  “I had an idea about all that, Procne. Would you like a room in my house when you come out? The rent’s quite low.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You see, there’s two things. They’re much more likely to let you out of here, early I mean, on parole, if you’ve got somewhere to go to—I mean a room of your own, and friends who they think are honest, and a job, and so on.”

  “Well, I haven’t got a job, have I? There’s only one thing I can do.”

  “Rubbish. You’d make a marvellous model, and you could use some of your mother’s money to pay for a course. I think I could easily set up a job for you if you wanted—I mean a proper job you’d be really interested in doing …”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, think about it … look, I’m not trying to tell you what to do—that’s your own business. Only I don’t want you to feel that you’ve got to go back to living the way you did because that’s all there is for you to do. If you want to, that’s fine. But if you want to try something else, I think I could help.”

  “It’s been my own fault, really. Just it always seems the easiest thing, so I string along. Then when this mob … Honest, Liz, you’d better keep out of it. You don’t know them.”

  “I can cope. They’ve got where they are because people are scared to stand up to them. Somebody’s got to, some time. I’m in a better position than most. The important thing is that you should ha
ve the choice open to you.”

  “Sometimes it’s best not to have no choice, then it isn’t your fault, see?”

  “Well, there’s plenty of time … damn! what a stupid thing to say. I found out about the vodka.”

  “Bet she wasn’t drinking none.”

  Lydia explained about the varosh, and the regular order at the off-licence. Procne shook her head.

  “Never!” she said. “Oh, she’d have nicked the booze and not turned a hair, provided she’d got someone she could flog it to. But empties in her room, never! I told you last time about what she did with Dad’s empties?”

  “Yes, you did. I had one possible idea—suppose your mother sometimes found a little in the bottom of one of the bottles—the old men are pretty clumsy with it—they spilt a whole jugful last month. Don’t you think she might have started to collect those dregs …”

  “Pity to waste that,” said Procne. The imitation of her mother’s voice was so accurate that Lydia was side-tracked.

  “Can you do that with other people?” she asked. “I mean could you do me?”

  “I’d have to have a bit of practice. I got one la-di-da voice I do, but it ain’t quite right for you. My dear girls, I have come here today to talk to you about the joys of crochet-work.”

  “Oh dear. I hope that’s not me.”

  “Course not. You got a way of biting your words off short, specially when you’re angry. Snip snap, that’s that, anyone else want a thorough dusting over? No, that’s not it, it’s only the top bit, not all that happiness you got inside you. Your husband’s a lucky man, Liz.”

  “I gave him a nervous breakdown three years ago—or at least I helped to give it him.”

  “Don’t you believe it—he’d of had it worse with anyone else.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t normally tell people. What were we talking about?”

  “Oh, me doing voices. I’ll have a bit of a practice at yours—I can do all the screws, and the governors—passes the time, see?”

  “I think it’s marvellous. I’m sure you could use it, too. But I meant before that—suppose your mother had collected about a bottle, and she suddenly felt depressed, or ill. Suppose she persuaded herself that the vodka counted as medicine …”