'Just a spot.'
She took Thomas by the arm and led him out of the tiny entrance hall into her book-filled sitting-room.
Edwin's and Lucy's cottage consisted of two rooms downstairs, which had been partly knocked into one, with a modern bathroom tacked on at the back. The stairs, which were hidden behind a latched door, led up to three rooms where one had to inch round the beds, bending one's head so as not to knock it on the eaves. Laura Ashley wallpaper everywhere covered uneven old plaster and rag rugs provided warmth underfoot. Lucy's books were stacked in columns on the floor along one wall in the sitting-room, having overflowed the bookcases, and in the kitchen there were wooden bowls, pestles and mortar, dried herbs hanging. Lucy's home was unselfconscious, not folksy.
Lucy herself, large in dark trousers and thick hand knitted sweater, sat Thomas in an armchair and in a very short time thrust a mug of hot liquid into his unwilling hand.
'Drink it, Thomas,' I said. 'How about some gin in it?' I asked Lucy.
'It's in.'
I smiled at her.
'Do you want some yourself?' she said.
'Just with milk.' I followed her into the kitchen. 'Have you got any tissues I could put over this mess?'
She looked at my shoulder. 'Are tissues enough?'
'Aspirins?'
'I don't believe in them.'
'Ah.'
I drank the hot tea. Better than nothing. She had precious few tissues, when it came to the point, and far too small for the job. I said I would leave it and go along to the hospital later to get it cleaned up. She didn't argue.
She said, 'What's all this about?' and dipped into a half-empty packet of raisins and then offered me some, which I ate.
'Thomas has left Berenice. He's in need of a bed.'
'Not here,' she protested. 'Take him with you.'
'I will if you won't keep him, but he'd be better off here.'
She said her son, my nephew, was up in his bedroom doing his homework.
'Thomas won't disturb him,' I said.
She looked at me doubtfully. 'There's something you're not telling me.'
'The last straw,' I said, 'has just broken Thomas. if someone doesn't treat him kindly, he'll end up in the nut house or the suicide statistics and I am not, repeat NOT, joking.'
'Well…'
'That's my girl.'
'I'm not your girl,' she said tartly. 'Perhaps I'm Thomas's.' Her face softened slightly. 'All right, he can stay.'
She ate another handful of raisins and went back to the sitting- room, and I again followed. Edwin had taken the second armchair. Lucy lowered her bulk onto a leather stool beside Thomas, which left me on my feet looking around. There were no other seats. Resignedly I sat on the floor and rested my back against a wall. Neither Lucy nor Edwin commented. Neither had invited me to sit.
'As I'm here,' I said, 'I may as well ask the questions I was going to come and ask tomorrow.'
'We don't want to answer,' Edwin said. 'And if you get blood on the wallpaper you can pay for redecorating.'
'The police will come,' I said, twisting slightly out of harm's way. 'Why not practise on me? They'll ask about the timing device that set off the bomb at Quantum.'
Thomas stirred. 'I made it, you know. The Mickey Mouse clock.' It was the first time he'd spoken since we'd left his house.
Lucy looked as if she thought him delirious, then raised her eyebrows and started to concentrate. 'Not that,' she said, troubled.
'Do you remember those clocks?' I asked.
'Of course I do. We've got one upstairs, that Thomas made for our son.'
'What sort of face has it got?'
'A sailing ship. Did the Mickey Mouse clock explode…'
'No,' I said. 'The one actually used had a grey plastic dial with white numbers. The Mickey Mouse clock was intact, in the playroom.'
Thomas said dully, 'I haven't made one for years.'
'When did you make the Mickey Mouse for Robin and Peter?' I asked.
'I didn't make it for them. I made it a long time ago for Serena. She must have given it to them. It made her laugh, when I made it.'
'You were a nice boy, Thomas,' Lucy said. 'Funny and kind.'
Edwin said restlessly, 'I would have -thought any timing device would have been blown to unrecognisable fragments by such a big bomb.'
'it seems they often find pieces,' I said.
'Do you mean,' he demanded, 'that they've actually sifted through all those tons of rubbish?'
'More or less. They know it was a battery clock. They found part of the motor.'
'It serves Malcolm right the house was blown up,' Edwin said with barely suppressed violence. 'Flinging money about on ridiculous scholarships. Keeping us poor. I suppose you're all right, aren't you?' There was a sneer there for me, openly. 'He's never been fair to Lucy. You've always been in the way, smarming him up, taking the lion's share. He gives you whatever you ask for while we have to struggle along on a pittance.'
'Is that the authentic voice of Vivien?' I asked.
'It's the truth!' 'No,' I said. 'It's what you have been told over and over again, but it's not the truth. Most people believe a lie if they're told it often enough. It's easy enough after all to believe a lie if you've heard it only once. Especially if you want to believe it.'
Lucy looked at me intently. 'You care about this, don't you?'
'About being cast perpetually as the family villain? Yes, I dare say I do. But I was thinking also of Thomas. He's been told ad infinitum that he's useless, and now he believes it. I'm going now, Lucy.' I stood up without haste. 'You tell Thomas over and over that he's a worthwhile person, and maybe he'll begin to believe that instead. You have to believe in yourself to get anywhere.'
'Oh yes,' she said quietly. 'You do.'
'What you've written,' I said, 'is for ever.'
Her eyes widened. 'How do you know… that I've lost…'
'I guessed.' I bent and kissed her cheek, to her surprise. 'Are you seriously in need?'
'Financially?' She was startled. 'No worse than usual.'
'Of course we are,' Edwin said to her waspishly. 'You're earning almost nothing now and you still spend a fortune on books.'
Lucy looked only mildly embarrassed, as if she'd heard that often before.
'If I held the purse-strings,' Edwin complained, 'you'd use the public library, as I do.'
'Why don't you work, Edwin?' I asked.
'Lucy doesn't like bustle.' He seemed to think it explanation enough. 'We'd be perfectly happy if Malcolm trebled Lucy's trust fund, as he ought to. He has millions, we live in a hovel. It's not fair.'
'Doesn't Lucy despise money?' I asked. 'And people who have it? Do you want her to become what she despises?'
Edwin glared.
Lucy looked at me blandly. 'There's no such state as perfection,' she said.
I drove back to Reading, to the hospital that had an emergency room open all evening, and there got my shoulder and upper arm cleaned and stitched. There were three cuts, it seemed, variously deep but nothing frightful, and they had long stopped bleeding: with the stitches, they would heal almost instantly. The staff advised pain- killers pro tem. I thanked them and eventually drove to Cookham feeling more than slightly tired but chiefly
