Barbara Vine - The Birthday Present

Those Saturday-afternoon walks were the best part of the week end for me because I got to carry Nadine—if it doesn't sound too sentimental, even if it does—close to my heart. I used to feel that I could walk along like that forever, along the green lanes where all the hedges were in blossom and primroses were on the banks, sometimes saying a word to Iris, breathing the fresh, clean air and feeling through the cloth and padding the warmth of Nadine's little body. Mostly she slept, but she'd stay awake too, gazing at everything we passed with round intelligent blue eyes and when I looked down at her she'd smile her enchanting smile. We'd reach our halfway point and I always turned back reluctantly. Iris teased me about it, laughing and saying that if I couldn't bear to be parted from my daughter she wouldn't stop me bathing her that evening and sitting by her cot till she went to sleep.

But that Saturday, though it was a fine day, we didn't go for a walk. I drove over to Great Cravery in the morning, rather later than usual because we'd had a lie-in, and bought one of the so-called quality papers. I glanced at it when I got back into the car and dropped it on the passenger seat. The headline across the front page was “Crash Horror Ends Kidnap Bid” and the photograph underneath it was one of those vehicle-disaster pictures in which nothing is really recognizable, but when you look more closely you can spot something that might be a broken headlamp and perhaps a single tire lying among ripped sheets of metal. I didn't look more closely. Not then. I drove back to the cottage and laid the paper down on the kitchen table in front of Iris, who was eating toast and marmalade with Nadine on her lap.

Some people flip through newspapers, reading only the items which interest them, and others take their time, lingering over every word. I belong in the first category, though I usually pay attention to the financial pages, but Iris is a lingerer. If it had been left to me I don't suppose I would ever have read that story about a kidnap and a crash; we'd have gone for our walk, had our neighbors round for drinks, and driven home next day in contented ignorance. Iris read it. She got to the foot of the page, said, “Here, you take her, Rob,” and, handing Nadine to me, turned over to pages two and three. Her expression had grown very serious, then aghast.

“What is it?” I said. “What's the matter?”

She passed the paper over to me. It was open at page three and a glance showed me the photograph of a very pretty girl with long blond hair.

“Ivor's girlfriend is called Hebe Furnal, isn't she?”

“Yes, of course. You know she is.”

“Then that's her. She's been killed. Read it yourself. Two men tried to abduct her but their car crashed and one of them was killed too. It's unbelievable but read it.”

WHEN IVOR TOLD us what had happened to him on Friday, May 18, he was still in shock but he was fairly calm. The House of Commons seldom sits on a Friday; it hadn't that day. That was why he had arranged the birthday present to take place then. In the morning, as soon as he calculated that Gerry Furnal would have left for his long bus and train journey to work, he phoned Hebe and they had their requisite phone sex, with Justin complaining in the back ground. Lunch was at the Turkish embassy, celebrating something or other, a treaty or a victory, and he got back to the flat by about half past three. He'd decided against driving up to Hampstead because even then it was difficult finding anywhere to park and, besides that, he knew he was likely to have a lot to drink, so he booked himself a taxi for six-thirty A black cab, not one of Lloyd Freeman's minicabs. Half an hour before the taxi was due he went out and bought a bottle of champagne and then, because it might not be enough, a second bottle. The five hundred pounds he'd drawn out of the bank in fifty-pound notes he divided into two and put two hundred and fifty pounds into envelopes. Then he wrote “Dermot” on one and “Lloyd” on the other.

It was just after seven when he let himself into our house. Seven was the time Hebe was supposed to be walking south along the Watford Way, where she would be picked up by Lloyd Freeman and Dermot Lynch, who would then bring her to our street, park the car, and carry her upstairs. Ivor worked out that she should be there by seven forty-five at the latest, even allowing for Friday evening's heavy traffic. He put the champagne in the fridge. He laid the two envelopes on the hall table and went to check upstairs. Among the fairly horrible fittings in our bedroom was a very large wall clock, circular and of frosted glass with chrome hands. That clock told him it was ten past seven.

He told me all this to illustrate, I suppose, how suspenseful the waiting was and how much worse it got. Of course, at ten past seven, it hadn't really started getting suspenseful, but it did make him wonder why he'd bothered to get there so early. What was he supposed to do with himself? He started thinking about his scenario and about something he hadn't before considered. There was no doubt Hebe would arrive suitably dressed (which meant un suitably dressed for any normal social occasion) but what of him? He went back upstairs, took his clothes off and put on a dressing gown he found in my clothes cupboard. It was mine, it had been given to me by a predecessor of Iris's, but I had never worn it and I'd only kept it because Iris liked it and said she'd a good mind to wear it herself, though she never had. It was black silk with a vaguely Chinese pattern in gold and a gold sash. Ivor said he looked like an actor playing David in Hay Fever. He passed another couple of minutes admiring himself in the mirror, but even then, according to the glass clock, it was only twenty-five past seven.

Because it was all over the papers, he had to tell me that it was on his instructions that Dermot and Lloyd handcuffed Hebe, roped her ankles, and tied a scarf round her mouth. He showed no embarrassment in telling me but spoke of it as if this was normal behavior. I didn't comment but I thought how extraordinary some people's tastes are, that this man, my own wife's brother, would get pleasure and no doubt excitement from something that would leave me cold.

By the time he was looking at himself in the glass, he went on, the two of them would have been on the Watford Way, a busy road at most times of the day, but residential too. The houses were set well back from the main highway and separated from it by their own front gardens, a service road, and a strip of grass with trees. Dermot, who was driving, would have pulled off the main highway onto this service road, where he could have remained parked while Hebe was trussed up. Ivor was taking it for granted she wouldn't have struggled much because, although she wasn't told what to expect, she knew to expect something that would ultimately be for her pleasure.

While this was going on, Ivor was waiting in our house. He never knew and probably no one apart from Dermot and Lloyd ever knew whether Hebe had been on time or late. There was one witness to the mock abduction. She was a woman called June Hemsley and she lived in one of the houses on the Watford Way behind the strip of grass, the service road, and her own front garden. She had been standing in the window of her front room, watching for her son to return home from his violin lesson. He was due at seven and Mrs. Hemsley had been standing in the window since that time. She told the police she had been there “for ten minutes” (which means very little, it's what people say when they mean a short time) when she saw two men in balaclavas get out of a car, which had been parked in the service road, say something to a girl who had been walking southwards and bundle her into the car. The girl didn't struggle much and the car didn't immediately move away but it had done so when Mrs. Hemsley's son arrived after about five minutes. That worry off her mind, she debated with herself whether she should phone the police. She looked out of the window again but the car had gone and she hadn't taken its number. Still, she did phone the police at seven thirty-five.