Katherine Brooks - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

“Look.”

Her hand was in her bag, her eyes on me. I looked in the bag, expecting some scrap of fabric she’d collected from God knows where, and saw the silver glint of a small revolver. When she was sure I’d seen it, she tucked a scarf over it and fished out her card wallet.

“How long have you been carrying that around?”

“Just this week. A friend got it for me.”

“Is it licensed?”

Her glance told me not to be silly.

“You know why I got it?”

“Welbrand?”

She nodded.

“I could get one for you, if you like. It costs, of course, and...”

“No.”

She shrugged, smiled up at the waiter, and put a card on the plate beside the bill.

We decided to walk back to Camden High Road and get taxis, but found ourselves wandering half-lost along side streets in the dusk, past piles of black plastic bags and cardboard cartons, snatches of canned bouzouki music from Greek-Cypriot restaurants. I was aware of the leather bag swinging between us, bumping against us.

“He was mad, you realise? We knew that at the time.”

“Perhaps we were mad too.”

“We were just visiting mad. He lived there.”

My envy stirred again, as at a superior address.

“Wouldn’t you say that we’ve probably done more with our lives than Welbrand — wherever he is?”

She swung in front of me on the pavement and made me stop walking.

“Peter, can you honestly say you’re everything you ever dreamed of being?”

“Of course not. Neither can you. Nobody can.”

“Yes, but why do we settle for that so easily? Why aren’t we inconsolable?”

A pair of kids in leathers coming out of a cafe looked at us with curiosity. We walked on slowly.

“A bad business that would be,” I said, “a world of middle-aged inconsolables.”

“Yes. That’s why we swore what we did.”

Anger was building up inside me. I knew that if I said anything it would probably be so hurtful to her that we’d never see each other again. At the next street corner she said we must go and find our taxis. And yet it struck me that she, who knew this part of London better than I did, was leading us by the most roundabout route possible, past every cul-de-sac and narrow alleyway on that side of Camden Town.

I said: “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”

A catch of breath.

“Who?”

“You’ve got a gun in your bag and yet you think you’re giving him a chance to find you. To find us.”

“No.”

I drew away from her and walked on fast. She came after me.

“Peter, wait.”

I waited.

“It’s true... in a way.”

Four steps of hers, three of mine, side by side.

“In a way I do want him to find me.”

By the light of the next restaurant window I saw that she was crying. She let me take us, by the most direct route, back to the High Road. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to happen. A heavy meeting today with the accountants... I didn’t mean to spoil your evening.”

No need to worry, I said.

“I’m thinking of selling the firm. Keeping a consultancy, of course.”

We discussed the pros and cons of that while semaphoring at taxis. One did a U-turn and came towards us.

“I’ll see you home.”

“Of course not. I’ll be fine now. Your turn next year.”

It took a second for me to understand that she was talking about our birthdays, as if the last half-hour hadn’t happened.

“All right,” I said, making a joke of it, “somewhere where Welbrand won’t find us.”

I needed to say his name. She watched the taxi gliding towards us as if she hadn’t heard. But as I opened the door for her she said:

“I’ll think of somewhere. I’ll let you know. All right?”

Then she slammed the door and was gone before I could answer.

All the confidence that had come back to me since we talked about the night on the island lasted through the next year. Everything was allowed. I took risks, professional and personal, and they turned out well because I never doubted they would. There was something extra too since that night in Camden Town — a sense of urgency that came back from long ago like a lost tune. Not that unhappy, fidgeting urgency that comes from fearing things are out of control, but a surge like riding a wave of seeing so much to do and feeling the power to do it.

“What are you on, Peter?” a colleague asked me one day. He was only half joking.

“Middle-age,” I said.

I’d no intention of explaining to him that I’d just recovered from an illness that had been with me for all my adult life. The name of it was envy. Envy of Welbrand. I hadn’t admitted it to myself until that night of my forty-ninth birthday in Camden Town when she went looking for him along small streets and up alleyways, with a gun in her bag in case he found her first. Admitting it had been the cure. My friends gave me a dinner on my fiftieth birthday and Gina came over from Paris. In my thank-you speech I told them that I’d never enjoyed a year more than my fiftieth. I meant it.

Three days later, after I’d got back from seeing Gina off at Heathrow, the phone rang.

“Peter?”

Her voice, a little defensive.

“Did you expect to hear from me?”

“Of course. It’s your birthday the day after tomorrow.”

“Are we meeting?”

“Yes. You said you’d think of somewhere.”

I was expecting her to name some out-of-the-way restaurant.

A hesitation, then: “I’ll bring the food, you see to the drink.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’ll call for you at half-past seven, okay?”

She rang off, without waiting for my answer, as if scared that the call might be traced.

Two days later, at twenty minutes past seven, I watched as her taxi drew up. Before she could get out I was across the pavement, champagne in the chiller bag, Saint Emilion in the carrier.

“Peter darling.”

She sounded breathless, nervy. She was wearing black trousers, a white frilled shirt with a black bolero jacket, black low-heeled shoes. I knew she must have chosen it as a good outfit for running in and felt my heart thumping. The year had not been kind to her. There were more lines round her eyes and lips. As the taxi drew away from the kerb she turned sideways on the backseat to stare at me.

“You look well, Peter.”

“So do you. Happy birthday.”

I’d decided not to ask where we were going. There was a blanket folded beside her and a new wicker picnic hamper. It had been a warm day, but with the sun on its way down the evening was cooling fast.

“Have you seen him?”

Her question sounded entirely businesslike.

“No. Have you?”

She nodded twice, then looked away.

The taxi worked its way eastward through the traffic. The leather bag, the same one as last year, was looped over her shoulder and her hand never left it. We drove through Highgate, then stopped when there were trees and dusk on our left and the thin, high voices of people calling to dogs.

“Picnic on the Heath?”

She got out, with the hamper and shoulder bag. I paid the driver and followed with the blanket and drink. She waited for me impatiently, then led the way along the path that curves upwards across the open Heath towards Highgate Ponds. The dusk was clotting. There was the smell of crushed grass all round us but the air was cool.

I said: “Why don’t we just have a drink out here then go to a restaurant? There’s a Peruvian place in Highgate where...”

“No.”

Where all the waiters would look like Welbrand, I supposed. I moved up beside her and we walked fast, like people with an appointment to keep.

We stopped by a locked gate in a clump of bushes. She said: “We’ll have to climb over it,” and did it almost as neatly and easily as a student, giving me the picnic basket to hold, but not her shoulder bag. I followed and we went down the path between the bushes in single file. There was nobody at the pool. The water was flat and white in the dusk, with a few ducks at the edges. If anybody needed a hiding place, there were a dozen of them, in the bushes, behind the changing huts, enough for a platoon of Welbrands. I looked at her, expecting her to become aware of that and take us back to the lights and traffic. Instead, in her flat pumps, she started to climb the ladder to the diving boards.