“You don’t think he’s acting a bit strangely? Why’s he bawling Izzy out for nothing?”
“Pressure of work?” suggested Robin.
“Yeah… maybe,” said Raphael. Then, frowning, he said, “He phoned me the other night, which is strange in itself, because he can’t normally stand the sight of me. Just to talk, he said, and that’s never happened before. Mind you, he’d had a few too many, I could tell as soon as he spoke.
“Anyway, he started rambling on about Jack o’Kent. I couldn’t make out what he was going on about. He mentioned Freddie dying, and Kinvara’s baby dying and then,” Raphael leaned in closer. Robin felt his knees touch hers under the table, “remember that phone call we got, my first day here? That bloody creepy message about people pissing themselves as they die?”
“Yes,” said Robin.
“He said, ‘It’s all punishment. That was Jack o’Kent calling. He’s coming for me.’”
Robin stared at him.
“But whoever it was on the phone,” said Raphael, “it can’t have been Jack o’Kent. He died years ago.”
Robin said nothing. She had suddenly remembered Matthew’s delirium, the depth of that subtropical night, when he had thought she was his dead mother. Raphael’s knees seemed to press harder into hers. She moved her chair back slightly.
“I was awake half the night wondering whether he’s cracking up. We can’t afford to have Dad go bonkers as well, can we? We’ve already got Kinvara hallucinating horse slashers and gravediggers—”
“Gravediggers?” repeated Robin sharply.
“Did I say gravediggers?” said Raphael restlessly. “Well, you know what I mean. Men with spades in the woods.”
“You think she’s imagining them?” asked Robin.
“No idea. Izzy and the rest of them think she is, but then they’ve treated her like a hysteric ever since she lost that kid. She had to go through labor even though they knew it had died, did you know that? She wasn’t right afterwards, but when you’re a Chiswell you’re supposed to suck that sort of thing up. Put on a hat and go open a fête or something.”
He seemed to read Robin’s thoughts in her face, because he said:
“Did you expect me to hate her, just because the others do? She’s a pain in the arse, and she thinks I’m a total waste of space, but I don’t spend my life mentally subtracting everything she spends on her horses from my niece and nephews’ inheritance. She’s not a gold-digger, whatever Izzy and Fizzy think,” he said, laying arch emphasis on his other sister’s nickname. “They thought my mother was a gold-digger, too. It’s the only motivation they understand. I’m not supposed to know they’ve got cozy Chiswell family nicknames for me and my mother, as well…” His dark skin flushed. “Unlikely as it might seem, Kinvara genuinely fell for Dad, I could tell. She could have done a damn sight better if it was money she was after. He’s skint.”
Robin, whose definition of “skint” did not comprise owning a large house in Oxfordshire, nine horses, a mews flat in London or the heavy diamond necklace she had seen around Kinvara’s neck in photographs, maintained an impassive expression.
“Have you been to Chiswell House lately?”
“Not lately,” said Robin.
“It’s falling apart. Everything’s moth-eaten and miserable.”
“The one time I really remember being at Chiswell House, the grown-ups were talking about a little girl who’d disappeared.”
“Really?” said Raphael, surprised.
“Yes, I can’t remember her name. I was young myself. Susan? Suki? Something like that.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells,” said Raphael. His knees brushed hers again. “Tell me, does everyone confide their dark family secrets to you after five minutes of knowing you, or is it just me?”
“Tim always says I look sympathetic,” said Robin. “Perhaps I should forget politics and go into counseling.”
“Yeah, maybe you should,” he said, looking into her eyes. “That isn’t a very strong prescription. Why bother with glasses? Why not just wear contacts?”
“Oh, I… find these more comfortable,” said Robin, pushing the glasses back up her nose and gathering her things. “You know, I really ought to get going.”
Raphael leaned back in his chair with a rueful smile.
“Message received… he’s a lucky man, your Tim. Tell him so, from me.”
Robin gave a half-laugh and stood up, catching herself on the corner of the table as she did so. Self-conscious and slightly flustered, she walked out of the tearoom.
Making her way back to Izzy’s office, she mulled over the Minister for Culture’s behavior. Explosions of bad temper and paranoid ramblings were not, she thought, surprising in a man currently at the mercy of two blackmailers, but Chiswell’s suggestion that a dead man had telephoned him was undeniably odd. He had not struck her on either of their two encounters as the kind of man who would believe in either ghosts or divine retribution, but then, Robin reflected, drink brought out strange things in people… and suddenly, she remembered Matthew’s snarling face as he had shouted across the sitting room on Sunday.
She was almost level with Winn’s office door when she registered the fact that it was standing ajar again. Robin peered into the room beyond. It seemed to be empty. She knocked twice. Nobody answered.
It took her less than five seconds to reach the power socket beneath Geraint’s desk. Unplugging the fan, she prized the recording device loose and had just opened her handbag when Aamir’s voice said:
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Robin gasped, attempted to stand up, hit her head hard on the desk and yelped in pain. Aamir had just unfolded himself from an armchair angled away from the door, was taking headphones from his ears. He seemed to have been taking a few minutes for himself, while listening to an iPod.
“I knocked!” Robin said, her eyes watering as she rubbed the top of her head. The recording device was still in her hand and she hid it behind her back. “I didn’t think anyone was in here!”
“What,” he repeated, advancing on her, “are you doing?”
Before she could answer, the door was pushed fully open. Geraint walked in.
There was no lipless grin this morning, no air of bustling self-importance, no ribald comment at finding Robin on the floor of his office. Winn seemed somehow smaller than usual, with purplish shadows beneath the lens-shrunken eyes. In perplexity he turned from Robin to Aamir, and as Aamir began to tell him that Robin had just walked in uninvited, the latter managed to stuff the recording device into her handbag.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, getting to her feet, sweating profusely. Panic lapped at the edges of her thought, but then an idea bobbed up like a life raft. “I really am. I was going to leave a note. I was only going to borrow it.”
As the two men frowned at her, she gestured to the unplugged fan.
“Ours is broken. Our room’s like an oven. I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said, appealing to Geraint. “I was just going to borrow it for thirty minutes.” She smiled piteously. “Honestly, I felt faint earlier.”
She plucked the front of her shirt away from her skin, which was indeed clammy. His gaze fell to her chest and the usual lecherous grin resurfaced.
“Though I shouldn’t say so, overheating rather suits you,” said Winn, with the ghost of a smirk, and Robin forced a giggle.
“Well, well, we can spare it for thirty minutes, can’t we?” he said, turning to Aamir. The latter said nothing, but stood ramrod straight, staring at Robin with undisguised suspicion. Geraint lifted the fan carefully off the desk and passed it to Robin. As she turned to go, he patted her lightly on the lower back.
“Enjoy.”
“Oh, I will,” she said, her flesh crawling. “Thank you so much, Mr. Winn.”
28
Do I take it to heart, to find myself so hampered and thwarted in my life’s work?
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm