Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

“What did she look like?”

The girl frowned, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t know, miss. Ordinary.”

“What age?”

“The same as you, I’d say.”

“Was that all she did, give you the message and ask you to pass it on to me?”

“Yes, and then she went off. She seemed in a great hurry, and agitated, like.”

“Thank you.”

Phoebe read the message again. Yes, there had been a Lisa in her class at the agency. She couldn’t recall her second name, if she ever knew it. A quiet girl, unremarkable, brown hair; that was all she remembered. Why the note, why not come to her table and talk to her? And why had she hurried away? It was all very mysterious. Perhaps someone was having a joke at her expense. She thought of Jimmy again. This was the kind of thing he liked to do, being a practical joker, with a schoolboy’s sense of humor. But Jimmy was dead.

She looked around the room. Clerks, shoppers, farmers’ wives up from the country. How Jimmy used to turn up his nose when he came in here, Jimmy the newshound, Jimmy the hotshot. All the same, he’d secretly liked the place. He had once said it reminded him of the kitchen at home, down the country, with the tea stewing on the range and his mother making fairy cakes.

She drank a cup of tea and ate half the sandwich. She had lost her appetite; the note from this Lisa person had taken it away. She had an urge to jump up and run over to the Green, to the bench by the pond, and clear up the mystery. Instead she made herself light a cigarette and sat smoking it, trying to see Lisa in her mind, trying to conjure up an image of her.

Ordinary, the waitress had said.

She finished the cigarette, and folded the note and put it into a side pocket in her handbag, paid the bill, and left.

In the street the sunlight blinded her for a second or two. Then she crossed the road, past the jarveys on their jaunting cars, past the heavy, rich smell of their horses, and went in the park by the small gate, plunging into the shade under the trees like a diver, she thought, cleaving smoothly through the surface of a swimming pool, into its dimmer depths. She walked along the cool pathway under the row of lindens. She passed by the little humpbacked bridge.

When she saw the young woman sitting on the bench she remembered her at once. She was pale-complexioned, with dark chestnut hair. She wore no makeup. Her cream-colored linen dress was expensive but not new. She sat very straight, gazing before her as if in a trance, both hands clasped on her handbag on her lap.

“Lisa?”

The young woman started. “Oh!” she said. “It’s you. I didn’t think you’d come.”

Phoebe sat down beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t remember your second name.”

“Smith,” the young woman said quickly, and bit her lip. “Lisa Smith. You remember me, from the agency?”

“Yes, of course I remember. I just couldn’t recall your name.”

The young woman was obviously in a state of terror. She was trembling all over, like a pony that had been galloping in panic for a long time and now had been brought to a stop.

“I couldn’t come into the café,” she said. “That’s why I gave the note to the waitress.”

“But — why couldn’t you come in?” Phoebe asked.

“I didn’t want anyone to see me. There might be someone there that knew me.” She put the knuckle of her thumb to her mouth and bit hard on it. “I have to keep moving, I feel if I stay in the open no one will—” She stopped.

“No one will what?”

Lisa looked away, the whites of her eyes flashing. “I don’t know,” she muttered.

“Well, anyway,” Phoebe said, trying to sound brisk and cheerful, “I’m glad to see you again. I don’t think we spoke much, when we were on the course, did we?”

“We just said hello, I think,” Lisa said. “You were always so busy.”

She looked away again, and Phoebe watched her. She really was terrified — but what was it she was terrified of?

“Can I ask,” Phoebe said carefully, “can I ask what it is you want to talk to me about?”

Lisa gave her head a rapid shake, not of refusal but in bewilderment. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how to explain.” She opened her handbag and took out a packet of Craven A and a box of matches. She pushed open the packet and offered it to Phoebe. “Would you like one?”

Phoebe shook her head. Lisa’s hand was trembling so badly she could hardly hold the flame of the match steady to light the cigarette.

“You seem upset,” Phoebe said. “Will you tell me what the matter is?”

“I have to get away,” Lisa said in a low, urgent voice. “I have to find somewhere to hide.”

“Hide?” Phoebe said, a tingle running down her spine. “Hide from what?”

Lisa gave another quick shake of the head. “I can’t tell you.” She was even less of a smoker than Phoebe was, and kept taking little pecks at her cigarette and letting the smoke out almost as soon as she had drawn it in. “Something happened,” she said. “Something — terrible, and I have to get away.” She turned her head suddenly and looked directly at Phoebe. Her lower lip was trembling, and she seemed on the point of tears. Her eyes were a glittering shade of green. “Will you help me? There’s no one else I can ask.” She looked away then and put a hand to her forehead. “What am I saying? We’re practically strangers, we’ve hardly exchanged a word before in our lives, and here I am, begging you to help me. You must think I’m mad.”

Phoebe frowned. What was she supposed to say, what was she supposed to do? It was true, they were strangers, or as good as; certainly she knew nothing about this young woman, who she was or where she came from or why she was in such a desperate state. Yet she felt a tug of sympathy for her, and a sense that she must find a way to help her. Phoebe knew what fear was, knew what it was to be frightened and alone.

“But tell me,” Phoebe said, “why you came to me?”

“I didn’t! I just looked in the window of the café and saw you there and recognized you. I remembered you from the course. You seemed nice. So I wrote the note and asked the waitress to give it to you.” She took another quick, ineffectual drag on her cigarette. “I have no one, no one I can go to. My mother is dead, my father—” She stopped again, and tears welled in her eyes. “There’s no one,” she whispered, “no one.”

Phoebe looked around. On the bench next to them a tramp was asleep, lying full-length on his side with his joined hands cradling his cheek; he looked, Phoebe thought, like the figure of a saint on a tomb. By the pond a small boy was trying to launch a toy sailboat, his nursemaid in her white bonnet standing by, seeming bored and distracted. Ducks quacked, waggling their rear ends. A seagull swooped down, veered, and climbed the air again. The sky was blue, with little white puffs of floating cloud. This was the world, familiar, comforting; terror had no place here, yet here it was, plain in this young woman’s face, in her trembling hands, in the wild look of her eyes.

“What do you want to do?” Phoebe asked.

“What?” Lisa stared at her, uncomprehending.

“I mean, do you want to leave the country, is that it?”

“Yes. No. It doesn’t matter. No, I don’t want to go away. I can’t. I just need somewhere to be for a while, somewhere where no one will find me.”

“And you can’t tell me why.”

“No. Not now, anyway.” She shook her head yet again. “You probably think I’m some kind of con artist, trying to fool you into helping me so I can rob you. I swear, I’m not.”

Phoebe had an urge to put a hand on hers, but didn’t.

“I believe you,” she said, not knowing what it was exactly she was supposed to believe in.