Mean Spirit

‘You mean he’d hate anyone to know he was consulting someone like me, so he’s setting me up ostensibly to amuse his friends, like you’d hire a bloody soprano?’

‘Say a string quartet,’ Nancy said soothingly.

Seffi froze. Was Nancy in on this? Was it the start of a subtle reshaping of her career, taking in discreet cocktail parties and country-house weekends? Seffi knew too many who’d gone down that road — sincere enough at first and then, inevitably, it had become an act, a routine, and on those occasions when it failed to happen they’d fill the void with imaginary voices.

‘Up to you.’ Nancy picked up the letter between thumb and forefinger, swinging her arm, cranelike, to a position over the wastebin. ‘Do you want me to …?’

Seffi snatched the letter.

Barber, with his politician’s false deference, is gliding like a game-show host between Seffi and the red-haired woman addressed by the tuxedo’d man as Coral. But when Barber turns to Seffi, it’s with uncertainty. No mistaking that fractional hesitation; he isn’t quite sure what’s supposed to happen. This makes absolutely no sense, not with the money he’s spending.

‘Miss Callard, are you …? Have you …?’

‘Started? No. This is a … wild card.’ Seffi smiles thinly. ‘Sometimes they just can’t wait.’

She has everyone’s attention now. Some of them standing, some sitting in chairs pushed together, all in a bunch. Cocktails clinking, teeth and jewellery twinkling in the half-light. She notices Barber’s sweating. Pretty bloody obvious he doesn’t want to be doing any of this. He’s actually paid over twenty grand for something he doesn’t want to be happening.

So who does? Some woman? Barber’s long divorced; is there a new woman, out there among the teeth, whom he’s trying to impress?

And yet he was making no pretence of friendship nor even of knowing Seffi before tonight. All this Miss Callarding. Shaking hands in a distant sort of way when she arrived, the merest meeting of eyes. Curious, because she has actually met him before, during that tedious period of attending receptions on her father’s arm.

Something very wrong about this. But then she’s always known, hasn’t she, that there would be?

The woman whispers, ‘Is it Kieran Hole?’

‘Fucksake,’ the man rasping out, ‘get a grip.’ He looks powerful, this guy, big shoulders. Seffi feels Kieran’s hatred for him. She puts a steady hand on the red-haired woman’s bony wrist, stares candidly into her contact lenses.

‘Your son didn’t leave a note, did he?’

‘No.’ A whisper. Hand full of rings tightening around the stem of her glass.

‘He thought you’d know, you see.’

‘Know?’

‘What a load of old shit!’ The man’s local accent rolling through. People frowning at him, wanting him out of the way because this is getting interesting.

‘Shut up! Leave us alone!’ The woman turning her stiffening back on him, spilling her drink. ‘Go on,’ she pleads to Seffi. ‘Go on.’

And oh, there’s a belief now, all right. And hunger in the wetness and the slackness of the lips.

‘Hold on …’ Seffi lifts a finger. ‘He’s asking my advice, I think. At first he dearly wanted you to know, but now he’s not sure it would do any good. He’s angry and upset, and confused above all. We tend to imagine death confers wisdom, but that’s not how it goes.’

‘… cking shit.’ The man spinning away, fists clenched.

‘He can move on. That’s my feeling. He isn’t earthbound, just weighed down, like a hiker with an overstuffed rucksack, yah? He needs to shed some of it before he can go on. It’s a question of whether you’re prepared to take it on. Take the weight. It won’t be comfortable. Are you going to be OK with that? You have to be sure.’

The woman nodding, but looking bewildered, lowering her glass to the carpet.

‘All right,’ Seffi says. ‘Kelly. Was there a Kelly?’

‘I’m going.’ The man pushes through the faces and the drinks. ‘Get yourself a cab.’

Seffi shaking her head. ‘Sorry, Kirsty. It was Kirsty, yah? I’m sorry.’

The man stops at the door, reeling sharply, as though he’s been hit by a sledgehammer in the small of the back.

‘His girlfriend!’ The woman gripping Seffi’s hand. ‘Kieran and Kirsty. They were getting engaged. She was his girlfriend …’

‘So she’s done her research.’ He’s got the door half-open. ‘She’s had some of us checked out, hasn’t she? That’s how the black bitch does it, you stupid woman, can’t you-?’

‘Bloody get out!’ Coral screeches.

A man murmurs, ‘Easy, now, Les,’ two other guys on their feet, guys the size of bouncers, guiding the tuxedo’d man from the room.

‘There’d been a row, OK?’ Seffi says. ‘It was about nothing in particular. It was after … a party?’

‘Yes. His birthday party. We hired-’

‘They were both pretty drunk. He’d been mouthing off and she told him … Kieran says he must’ve blanked out what she told him. It didn’t really hit home until …’

Tangible suspense. The only lights are from the muslin-shaded porcelain lamp on the Chinese table to her left and the white tongue of the ball-candle which is supposed to dispel cigarette smoke.

‘… until he awoke the following morning. Terrible hangover. Sickness. The usual.’

‘Yes. Yes, he did! He looked awful! How could you have known that? No-one could’ve known that!’

‘And it’s swirling round and round him, what she said, right? What Kirsty said. Round and round in his head. All that day. He can’t go out. Can’t face anybody. Walking. A sunny day. Late afternoon, long shadows. Big garden. Red brick.’

‘We were, oh God, living in a farmhouse. Eighteenth century …’

‘A gazebo at the bottom of the garden. He’s walking round and round it.’

Coral’s lips are spreading into a silent wail.

‘Round and round the gazebo.’ Seffi’s breath coming hard and fast, like gas. ‘He doesn’t want to see anybody. All the time hearing what she said, what Kirsty said.’

Coral waits for it, her face lined and bloodless. Coral knows. Coral knows already what this is going to be.

‘About how his father’s a better fuck,’ Seffi says.

Eventually a woman takes Coral out of the room, supporting her as though she’s been found in the street, knocked down by a car, and there could be something broken.

The lights are on, the atmosphere in Sir Richard Barber’s drawing room raw with excitement, spattered with emotional shrapnel.

Seffi sitting in the aftermath, surrounded by nervous laughter, unwilling awe, shrivelling scepticism.

‘I’m sorry,’ she tells no-one in particular. ‘He wanted to come. Sometimes they just … do.’

Look, it needed to be done, she used to tell herself. All those comfy old mediums who sanitize everything, only pass on the innocuous stuff, the trite crap. Times change. Honesty is what is needed now.

Yet it horrifies her: twenty thousand pounds for exploding a bomb under a marriage?

Seffi Callard is suddenly personally afraid. All eyes on her. And these are … these are nightclub people. About twenty of them, all expensively dressed, but perhaps too expensively. More than a hint of the garish. Money, certainly, but not old money. And the sense that Barber doesn’t know any of them very well. A room full of comparative strangers. Extras in a movie.

Of which Sir Richard Barber is not the director.

‘Miss Callard … is there anything I can get you?’

‘Sir Richard,’ she says quietly, ‘I think it’s time I left, don’t you? Could someone call me a taxi? This was a mistake.’

His unhappy eyes agree with her; his mouth says, ‘No. Emphatically not.’

‘We’ll return your cheque in the morning.’