Quintin Jardine - A Coffin For Two

‘Sure,’ she responded, quickly. ‘But before, you’d have just picked up the telephone, and told Allan he was an arse; or if you were really pumped up, maybe you’d have gone and thumped him. But you wouldn’t have got involved, not like you did. You’ve changed all right, and I’ve got to credit Primavera for that.’

She sipped her coffee. ‘But tell me something I’ve always wanted to know, Oz, about you and Jan. What happened to the two of you?’

Taken by surprise, I stared for a while out of the bay window. ‘Time?’ I ventured at last, but without conviction.

‘Bollocks,’ said Ellen, with a laugh. ‘Do better.’

I tried again. ‘Okay. I suppose that at some point we decided that with the way we had grown up together, and become a couple, it had all come too easy for us. I suppose that we decided that we were drifting towards marriage because it was expected of us, and maybe because it was the soft option. I suppose we just decided that it was wrong. We never had a great debate about it. It just … worked out that way.’

‘Mmm,’ said my sister, pressing herself back into the sofa. We sat in silence for two or three minutes, until she looked across at me and whispered, ‘Oz, is that really true?’

I looked deep into my mug, as if it was a window to the past. ‘No,’ I said, for the first time in my life. ‘The truth isn’t that we decided anything. I did.

‘At university, everyone had a steady. That was the way it was, and so there was no pressure on Jan and me. But at some point in my very short police career, I looked around at my contemporaries, and the way they lived. There they were, young guys like me, tear-arseing around in their time off, scoring women like trophies. There was one guy we called Comanche, because every time he made a new conquest, he used to cut off a curl of her hair — and you know what I’m talking about — and bring it to work with him next day.

‘I looked at those characters and I told myself, “This is how normal young men live.” And I began to feel abnormal. At that point, Jan was the only girl I’d ever slept with, and I thought to myself, “What if we get married, and at some point I come to regret all that missed experience? What if I start to fancy the grass on the other side of the hill, enough to go grazing?” I was afraid of that, Ellie. Maybe I was afraid of the hurt of losing her, so I ensured that I never would, by pushing her away.’

‘But there was something else too, Oz, wasn’t there?’

‘Yes.’ It came out in a hoarse whisper. ‘I really did want to graze, from the start. I just couldn’t suppress it. Sex with Jan was good, but it was rarely great, and never all that it might have been. Both of us knew that. But then how could it have been? We only had experience of each other.’

I gazed across at her. ‘I did it very gradually, disengaging myself, until it was how it was and she had settled for being best friends. Of course, I never told her what I’ve just told you. I’ve never admitted that to anyone before … not even me.’

‘What about love, Oz? How did you make yourself stop loving her?’

‘I never even tried. I never did stop. I’ll always love Jan, but in a way that’s different from anyone else. I’ll always be there for her, except for …’

‘Except for the times when she might need you the most. When was the last time you slept with Jan?’ asked Ellie suddenly.

‘Last March, before I met Prim. We had a sort of arrangement.’

‘Yes, I know about it. Jan and I had a girlie night. She had a few drinks and told me about it. Occasional grazing rights on each other, to use your analogy. Only now you’ve closed the pasture. So don’t tell me you’ll always be there for her, brother, although I know you’d like to mean it. How can you be, when you’re living in Spain, in love with another woman?’

She looked at me, with a very straight face. ‘Oz, if you want to do what’s best for Jan, you should cut her out of your life completely. Maybe both of you should have done that years ago.’

She paused. ‘Let me ask you something? Just suppose that instead of Jan More it had been Primavera Phillips that you grew up with, and drifted towards marriage with. Would things have been different then?’

‘Stop!’ For a second I was afraid my shout might have wakened the boys. ‘You’re doing my head in. Things are as they are, and that’s it. As for cutting Jan off, no way could I do that. But if that’s what she wants, it’s open to her.

‘As for you, get back into your glass house, with your fancy man, and stop throwing stones!’

I took my nephews to St Andrews next morning, in the back of my dad’s beloved and exceptionally low mileage old Jag, with Jonathan on a booster seat and Colin in his car seat attachment. I called Auntie Mary’s to ask if Jan wanted to come too, but she said that the supermarket was at the top of their agenda.

I took them into the castle, and showed them the bottle dungeon, and the mine and counter-mine, telling them the same tales of John Knox and the wars of the reformation that Mac the Dentist had told their mother and me, but leaving out any mention of the Cardinal’s body hanging in the great window, or of burning martyrs down yonder on the Scores.

We wandered down towards the old course. There, on a whim, I took Jonathan into Auchterlonie’s and bought him his first golf clubs, a junior three wood, seven iron and putter, smiling at the realisation of the pestering they would cause my dad after I was gone.

Finally, having shown them the ruin of the cathedral, told them more spooky stories, and treated them to multi-coloured ice creams from Janetta’s, we headed back over the hill to Anstruther, leaving enough time for Colin to be sick before lunch.

‘You’ll keep Christmas free then,’ said my dad quietly as I said goodbye, to him and to Wallace, at Auntie Mary’s front door, with Jan waiting outside in the Fiesta.

‘Sure I will.’

He gave me a hug. ‘No fuss, remember. Good luck with the new business.’

‘Did you get the renewed message from Mac about quiet weddings?’ Jan asked, as we headed out of town. ‘I did from Mum.’

I nodded.

‘What are we going to do, then?’

‘What else? I’ve told Ellie to book the village hall for the afternoon as soon as we know the date.’

Jan beamed across at me. ‘That’s my boy. Who do they think they’re messing with, eh!’

As we skirted Kirkcaldy it started to rain. ‘First I’ve seen in four weeks,’ I said. I tilted up the glass roof, and breathed deeply to enjoy the smell of the moistened dust by the roadside, and of the dampening fields.

‘D’you miss it?’

‘I’ve made a point of not thinking in terms of missing. Thanks for arranging last night, though. I really enjoyed it.’

‘Did you and Ellie sit up late?’

‘Late enough. She’s sorted, okay. Has she been talking much to you?’

Jan laughed. Her rich, deep laugh. ‘Do you mean has she told me about her illicit nookie? Oh, yes. But don’t you worry about it. She’s grazing, darlin’, that’s all. Just grazing.’

I looked across at her in surprise, but her eyes were on the road.

‘So,’ I said at last. ‘Where are we meeting BSI’s first client?’

‘At his house. He lives in Milton Bridge, just outside Penicuik. He faxed me a map showing how to get there.’

‘Mmm. So what does he do for a living, this Mr Gavin Scott? I can’t say I’ve ever heard of him.’

Jan shook her dark head. ‘Your clients have been mostly lawyers till now, so that doesn’t surprise me. The header sheet on the fax he sent me came from Soutar’s, the advertising agency in Leith. I’ve got a small agency on my client list, so I was able to check him out.