Barbara Vine - The Birthday Present

“When you hear the division bell,” I said when Ivor came back, “do you still think of the first time you saw Hebe?”

Once before he'd told me that ringing reminded him of her. He stared. “That's not at all the sort of question I'd expect you to ask. It's not actually a man's question at all. Now if Iris had asked it …”

“Do you?”

“Rob, just think about it. How many times have I gone into the division lobby in the past four years? It wouldn't be possible. It wouldn't be in human nature. I was crazy about Hebe, as you know, but even so …”

“Don't worry about Jane Atherton,” I said. “You won't hear any more about it.”

And for a while he didn't.

FIVE PARLIAMENTARY BY-ELECTIONS back in June and simultaneous elections to the European Parliament had illustrated (I'm quoting a left-wing newspaper) the level of unpopularity of the Conservative government. The Liberal Democrats won in Eastleigh by more than nine thousand votes over Labour, with the Conservatives in third place. Bradford South and Barking were both held by Labour with much increased majorities, the Conservatives again in third place. On the crest of this wave, that autumn Aaron Hunter made a widely publicized speech at a Lib Dem rally in Imberwell, a most unusual thing for an Independent candidate to do.

He lashed out at sleaze, having, I suppose, its latest perpetrator or victim, an air marshal with an unsuitable girlfriend, in mind, but referring to people in public office generally and to Tory MPs in particular. There was the one who had committed perjury and the one who had committed adultery and perjury and another who had accidentally hanged himself during some masturbatory activity. He harked back to orgiastic house parties of thirty years before and pinpointed a three-in-a-bed drama of recent months. His tone throughout was sanctimonious. It's my contention that all political parties have their sleaziness. With the left-wing, Labour or Liberal, it's mostly versions of fraud, while with the Conservatives it's sex. Once, when I put this theory to Ivor, he laughed and said he knew which kind he'd prefer, and most sensible people would agree with him.

What view he took of Hunter's speech I don't know. We never discussed it. His view of the man was basically that politics was for professionals and those who had been trained in other disciplines shouldn't dabble in it, though where the dividing line between the amateur and people like himself came, he didn't say. One thing I was pleased to hear from him was that he and Juliet had “phased out” (his phrase) their visits to the Lynches.

“The difficulty,” he said to me, “is the class difference. Always was, I suppose. I've pretended to myself that I can transcend all that, even that they enjoy my company and, God help us, I enjoy theirs. But it isn't so. They're not comfortable with me. I'm not comfortable with them. I can't take Sean's girlfriend calling me ‘Ive.' It's a bit easier for Juliet, they get on better there.”

He paused. I thought for one uneasy moment that he was going to hint that Juliet was several rungs lower down the class ladder than he was, but he didn't. Maybe he recognized the danger in time and restrained himself.

“But the upshot of it is that we've had to put the brakes on.” Along with his increased pomposity, my brother-in-law had taken on a good many politician's clichés since he became a minister. “I've had to face the fact that the important factor for them in our relationship, such as it was, is that I'm the source of a considerable chunk of their income. And why not? This way it's a good deal easier all round. It's no use thinking we can have a level playing field because we can't.”

I've no idea if Ivor was the first to use that particular metaphor but he was certainly one of the first. He may have invented it. I'm sure that was the first time I'd heard anyone say it, though now of course it seems to have become accepted politics-speak. No major speech can afford to be without it. But Iris and I were glad of the break with the Lynches and told each other so, Iris adding that her brother seemed to be showing some sense at last. We were speaking too soon. Ivor's mistake was not so much that he had made contact with the whole Lynch family or that he had given them money, but rather that he had ever known them in the first place—that he had ever asked the man who serviced his car to drive the Mercedes that picked up Hebe.

It was a while before we experienced a déjà vu feeling. News papers almost weekly carry a paragraph saying that a man (a nameless man at that stage) is helping the police with their inquiries. We noted what the rest of the country did, that someone had been found for the murder of Jane Atherton. The poor girl with the frizzy hair, the girl lying on her own bed in her own blood. What the newspapers seldom tell you is that the police have let this particular nameless man go home because he is the wrong man.

This one, however, looked like the right man and he hadn't gone home. Not like he had once before, when suspected of IRA afiliations, which was where our we-have-been-here-before came in. His name was Sean Lynch and he'd been charged with Jane Atherton's murder.

27

We never knew how the connection was made, only possible ways in which it might have come about. But next day one single newspaper carried a short and apparently innocuous note: the arrested man was the elder brother of Dermot Lynch, driver of a kidnap car involved in a crash four years ago, in which two people had died. Now, once a man has appeared in court and been charged with an offense, the media are supposed to keep silent about him. His past, his antecedents, his family history, all this must not be touched upon in case public prejudice is created; it is from this public that a jury will later be drawn.

Mostly they don't touch upon it, but there are exceptions, which usually give rise to rebuke or even threats from the judiciary. Revealing these facts about Dermot Lynch (who had never been tried for anything, let alone kidnapping) was a breach of this rule but nothing was ever done about it. In the normal course of things, Ivor would see several daily newspapers every morning but not, I thought, that day. He had told me on the phone the evening before that he would be flying to Culdrose in Cornwall “at the crack of dawn.” There's an RAF helicopter base at Culdrose and he was going there to view something or inspect something.

At the present day you can get hold of anyone anywhere and at any time. Everyone carries a mobile phone. Apparently, there are more mobiles in this country than people. There weren't thirteen years ago. I hadn't got one and Iris hadn't. Poor Jane Atherton had one but only for use in her car. Ivor had shown me his but I didn't know the number and doubted if anyone at the department would give it to me. Also, phoning him while at an important visit that was part of his job wasn't the way I'd choose to break this news to him.

Instead, I phoned Juliet.

BEFORE I DID so I realized something which was always slipping my mind, that Ivor's fianceé knew as much about events of May 1990 as we did, probably as much as Ivor himself did. Nothing need be kept dark from her. There was no need for even ordinary discretion.

She hadn't seen the paper but as soon as I read it out to her she said she'd come. No, we needn't arrange to meet somewhere, she'd come. She'd like an excuse to see the children. She arrived in Ivor's car, the big BMW. I don't know why, but if anyone had asked me or I'd asked myself I'd have said she was that rare creature, the person who can't drive. It's an absurd thing to say, and probably sexist too, but I'd seen her as ultra-feminine, too feminine to be a driver. Of course I was wrong. She steered the rather macho, cumbersome car between our gateposts with panache. Each time I saw her I'd forgotten how beautiful she was. The legs, which were the first thing about her to attract Ivor, descended from the driving seat in that most elegant way a woman can alight from a car, moving her body to the right in her seat and, with knees pressed together, setting both feet on the ground. It was autumn and she wore a black and white figured skirt with a pure white cardigan. I wondered if I had ever seen a lovelier woman, her black hair cut to fall just below her ears, a fringe coming to just above her eyebrows, her lips painted a deep pink and parting then in a wide smile. It's strange how I could admit her transcendent beauty and yet at the same know that I found my own wife far more attractive. Just as well, I suppose.