I expect, you seem to have everything else there, so we thought there might be a knife.’
‘He won’t find one there.’ Alfreda went to the door and shouted down the corridor. ‘Look in my handbag.’
‘Knew you’d have one,’ said May.
Coffin looked at Stella. They can keep this up for ever, his gaze said, and if we aren’t lucky we shall have to stay and eat some of that cake.
Stella did the right thing, as she always did when it suited her. ‘There’s a bottle of champagne in my office. In the fridge. Send Tom for it and you three have it, with my love. Bless you all.’
She swept out, in her new blue and white Jean Muir, and Coffin followed.
In the corridor they passed Barney, plain Barney, who pressed himself against the wall politely so they could pass.
I think his mother beats him, thought Coffin, he always has a kind of bruised look.
‘Rubbish, he’s just young and nervous and in his first job,’ said Stella, as if he had spoken aloud. Well, not quite his first job, he had worked on that stall that sold sandwiches and hot dogs, but that was just to earn money as any student might.
‘What did I say?’ Coffin asked. ‘Did I speak?’
‘You said poor devil.’
‘Would you want Alfreda for a mother?’
‘She’s devoted to him. You can see it. As he is to her.’
‘I don’t know about mother love, it never came my way.’ Coffin’s parent had dumped him early in life to be brought up by a woman he called his aunt, although their exact relationship continued to worry him. His memory let him down and the evidence was perplexing. Sometimes he told one story about himself, sometimes another. Meanwhile his mother had gone gallivanting off with numerous romantic encounters to her credit. If you could believe her own diary, discovered well after her death. If she was dead. The one truth about his mother was that you could not believe everything you heard.
No, he hadn’t known much about mother love.
‘And he has me as a guv’nor,’ Stella finished triumphantly. ‘He couldn’t do better.’
She took him by the arm. ‘Come on, they are not the only ones in need of comfort, you are. And there is some more champagne in our tower.’ She looked in his face. ‘Or you can have whisky or a hot cup of tea.’
‘Do I look as bad as that?’
‘Pretty well, love.’ She put her arm round him. ‘I know you are in trouble … Come on, let me bind your wounds.’
They walked the few yards to their tower.
‘It’s not just the child, although that’s bad enough, nor worry about the riot – they probably have a right to kick up a stir,’ said Coffin awkwardly, after a pause.
‘No?’
He didn’t say anything more, but took a deep breath.
‘You want to answer or not?’
‘I usually tell you everything.’ Usually, but not quite always. I am not, for instance, going to tell you that I am sick inside about the man you met in Rome, Rome for romance, and who telephones you all the time. ‘In the end.’ It was a lame, doubtful finish.
‘So not yet?’
‘I think that’s about it. Not yet.’
Too powerful, too horrible. Too much his. Not to be spoken of too soon.
‘You’re glum, that’s what you are,’ said Stella lightly, opening their front door, and stepping up the stairs. Right you are, her back said; her elegant swaying step said, I accept silence. Only not for ever. ‘Glum and tense.’
‘Not cross.’
‘Very, very angry inside. I can feel it … Never mind, I don’t mind a bit of tension in a relationship, it shows it’s alive.’
She gave him a sharp look as if she might have doubted it otherwise. He did not respond.
Their living room smelt stuffy and hot, so Stella threw open the big sash window. The big tabby cat jumped on to the windowsill from the high branch of an overhanging tree and purred at her. ‘You’ll kill yourself one day doing that jump, cat. You’ll get it wrong and fall.’
The cat ignored this, which he knew could never happen. Not to him. To the dog, possibly, or to another cat, but not to a brave cat. He knew that jump as well as he knew his name, and the certainty that, any minute, his mistress was going to give him his supper.
Coffin walked over to his desk. Amongst all the other communications, there was a message on his answerphone from the office.
‘Harry Trent called from Greenwich. Inspector Trent. He will call again. He said it was personal.’
Stella, having fed Tiddles and also the dog, had returned. ‘Shall we eat in or go out?’
He looked at her without seeing her.
‘Answer, please.’
In a very little while, Stella’s quick temper would show itself and that tension which she claimed to like in a relationship would prove itself very alive and very active. Boiling oil might come into it somewhere.
‘Out.’ Then he thought about Harry Trent trying to reach him on the telephone on some personal matter. ‘No, here.’ And then, to hell with Harry Trent, out would be better. He liked Harry Trent, no question about that, a good man, and he had enjoyed working with him, but he was a man after whom trouble came trailing. Perhaps he was always so anxious himself. ‘No, let’s go to Max’s.’
Over the years, the simple café with which Max had started out had flourished and altered its name from Max’s to Maxi’s and was now Maximilian’s. Still Max’s to Coffin, though.
‘I’ll just go and change, then.’ Stella was cheerful at once. She loved changing her clothes, being in the theatre, putting on costume, taking it off, changing make-up was no hardship to her.
‘Be quick then.’ Or Harry Trent might slip in his call before they escaped. He wanted to escape.
‘You could do with a fresh shirt yourself.’ There was gentle but loving reproof in her voice, that rich voice that could express anything she wished it to.
But Harry Trent got in while he was still halfway clothed; he heard the bell and hoped she had not.
‘Don’t answer that,’ he called to Stella. But she already had.
‘It’s for you.’ And she handed him the telephone.
‘Harry? Thought it might be you.’
‘Is this a good time to talk?’
Coffin caught his wife’s eyes, buttoning his shirt with one hand as he did so. ‘Not
