Elizabeth George: Careless in Red

He finally said to her the only thing worth saying, the only request he had that she might grant at this point. He’d asked once and been denied, but it seemed to him that she might reconsider although he couldn’t have explained why. They were jouncing across the car park of the Salthouse Inn where they’d begun their day when he spoke a final time.

“Will you call me Tommy?” he asked her again.

“I don’t think I can,” she replied.

HE WASN’T PARTICULARLY HUNGRY, but he knew he had to eat. To eat was to live, and it appeared to him that he was doomed to go on living, at least for now. After he watched Daidre drive off, he went inside the Salthouse Inn, and he decided that he could face a bar meal but not the restaurant.

He ducked inside the low doorway and found that Barbara Havers had possessed the same idea. She was in the otherwise abandoned inglenook, while the rest of the bar’s patrons crowded on stools round the few scarred tables and at the bar itself, behind which Brian was pouring pints.

Lynley went to join her, drawing out the stool opposite the banquette that she herself occupied. She looked up from her food. Shepherd’s pie, he saw. The obligatory sides of boiled carrots, boiled cauliflower, boiled broccoli, tinned peas, and chips. She’d used ketchup on the lot of it, save the carrots and the peas, which she’d moved to one side altogether.

“Didn’t your mum insist you eat all your veg?” he asked her.

“That’s the beauty of adulthood,” she replied, shoving some of the mash and minced beef onto her fork, “one may ignore certain foods altogether.” She chewed thoughtfully and observed him. “Well?” she asked.

He told her. As he did so, he realised that, without anticipating or wanting it, he’d passed into another stage of the journey he was on. One week ago, he’d not have spoken at all. Or if he’d done so, it would have been to make a remark that served to abbreviate the conversation as much as possible.

He finished with, “I couldn’t actually make her see that this sort of thing…the past, her family, or at least the people who gave birth to her…It’s not important, really.”

“’Course not,” Havers said genially. “Abso-bloody-lutely not. Not in a bottle. Not on a plate. And specially not to someone who never lived it, mate.”

“Havers, we’ve all got something in our pasts.”

“Hmm. Right.” She forked up some broccoli doused in ketchup, carefully removing a single pea that had got mixed in. She said, “Except not all of us have silver serving dishes in ours, if you know what I mean. And what’s that big thing you lot have sitting in the centre of your dining room tables? You know what I mean. All silver with animals hopping about it. Or vines and grapes or whatever. You know.”

“Epergne,” he told her. “It’s called an epergne. But you can’t possibly be thinking that something as meaningless as a piece of silver-”

“Not the silver. The word. See? You knew what to call it. D’you think she knows? How much of the rest of the world ever knows?”

“That’s hardly the point.”

“That’s just the point. There’re places, sir, that the hoi polloi aren’t going to, and your dinner table is one of them.”

“You’ve eaten at my dinner table yourself.”

“I’m the exception. You lot find my ignorance charming. She can’t help it, you think. Consider where she came from, you tell people. Sort of like saying, ‘Poor thing, she’s American. She doesn’t know any better.’”

“Havers, hang on. I’ve never once thought-”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, waving her fork at him. She had chips on it now, although they were barely discernible through the ketchup. “I don’t care, you see. I don’t mind.”

“Then-”

“But she does. And that’s the bit that gets one into trouble: the minding bit. Don’t mind and you can swan round in ignorance or at least pretend to. Mind and you’re all thumbs and fumbling with the cutlery. Sixteen knives and twenty-two forks and why are these people eating asparagus with their fingers ?” She shuddered dramatically. She went for more shepherd’s pie. She washed it down with what she was drinking, which appeared to be ale.

He watched her and said, “Havers, is it my imagination, or have you been drinking rather more than your usual tonight?”

“Why? Am I slurring my words?”

“Not slurring exactly. But-”

“I’m owed. A stiff one. Fifteen stiff ones if that’s what it takes. I’m not driving and I should be able to make it up the stairs. Just.”

“What’s going on?” he asked her, for it wasn’t like Havers to drink to excess. She was generally a one-a-week sort of drinker.

She told him, then. Jago Reeth, Benesek Kerne, Hedra’s Hut-which she referred to as “some mad cabin on the edge of the cliff where we all might’ve died, mind you”-and the result, which was no result at all. Jonathan Parsons and Pengelly Cove, Santo Kerne, and-

“Are you saying he confessed?” Lynley said. “How extraordinary.”

“Sir, you’re missing the point. He didn’t confess. He supposed. He supposed this and he supposed that and in the end he supposed himself right out of that hovel and on his way. Revenge is sweet and all that rubbish.”

“And that’s it?” he said. “What did Hannaford do?”

“What could she do? What could anyone do? If this had been written by the Greeks, I suppose we could hope that Thor would hit him with a bolt of lightning in the next couple days, but I wouldn’t count on that.”

“Good grief,” Lynley said, and then after a moment he added, “Zeus.”

“What?”

“Zeus, Havers. Thor’s Norse. Zeus’s Greek.”

“What ever, sir. I am, we know, one of the hoi polloi. Point is this: The Greeks aren’t exactly involved here, so he walks away. She intends to keep after him but she’s got sweet FA to work with, thanks to that idjit McNulty whose sole contribution appears to be one surfing poster. That and giving out information when he’s meant to keep his mug plugged tight. It’s a right bloody mess, and I’m glad I’m not responsible for it.”

Lynley blew out a breath. “Ghastly for the family,” he said.

“Isn’t it just,” she replied. She examined him. “You eating or what, sir?”

“I thought to have something,” he told her. “How’s the shepherd’s pie?”

“Shepherd’s pie-ish. One can’t be too choosy when it comes to shepherd’s pie as a bar meal, I find. Let’s put it this way, Jamie Oliver’s got nothing to worry about tonight.” She forked up a sample and handed it over.

He took it and chewed. It would do, he thought. He started to get up to order himself a plate from the bar. Her next remarks stopped him.

“Sir, if you don’t mind…” She spoke so carefully that he knew what was coming.

“Yes?”

“Will you come back to London with me?”

He sat down again. He looked not at her but at her plate: the remains of the shepherd’s pie and the carefully avoided peas and carrots. It was all so vintage Havers, he thought. The meal, the carrots, the peas, the conversation they’d been having, and the question as well.

He said, “Havers…”

“Please,” she said.

He looked up at her. Ill featured, ill dressed, ill shorn. So quintessentially who she was. Behind the mask of indifference she presented to the world he saw what he’d seen in Havers from the first: the earnestness and the truth of her, a woman among millions, his partner, his friend.

He said, “In time. Not now, but in time.”

“When?” she asked. “Can you at least say when?”

He looked to the window, which faced the west. He thought about what lay in that direction. He considered the steps he’d taken so far, and the rest of the steps that remained to be taken.