“Or something. Something has told you. And if you speak of demands being made under these circumstances, demands that Fahd Kumhar made of Haytham Querashi, you must be speaking of blackmail as well.”
“You're really getting ahead of yourself,” Barbara said. “All I'm saying is that if one person saw Querashi doing a job where he wasn't employed, another person might have done the same. End of story.”
“And you think that other person is Fahd Kumhar,” Azhar concluded again.
“Look.” Barbara was feeling exasperated, partly because he'd read her so well and partly because his reading of her could lead to his muddying up the case by involving his cousin where his cousin wasn't wanted. “What bloody difference does it make if it's Fahd Kumhar or the Queen of—”
“Here, here, here!” The sing-song cry came from Hadiyyah, who stood at the door. She waved her watercolours in one hand. In the other, she held a white-lidded jam jar. “I only brought two cause the one of the sea's awfully bad, Barbara. And look, see what I caught as well? He was in the roses outside the dining room and after lunch I got a jar from the kitchen and he flew right in.”
She presented her jam jar for Barbara's inspection. In the fading light, Barbara saw a rather unhappy bee flinging itself hopelessly against the glass.
“I put some food in for him. Look. D'you see it? And I poked some holes through the top. D'you think he'll like London? I expect he will cause there's lot of flowers, so he can eat them up and then make honey.”
Barbara set the jar by the chess board on the table and gave it a close inspection. The food Hadiyyah had provided consisted of a wilting pile of rose petals and a few sad leaves with their edges curled inward. A Nobel-calibre entomologist in the making, she clearly wasn't. But she was positively inspired when it came to the art of providing distraction.
“Well,” Barbara said, “here's the problem with that, kiddo. Bees have families, and they all live together in hives. They don't like strangers, so if you take this bee back to London with you, he won't have any family to live with. I expect that's why he's in such a state at the moment. It's getting dark, and while it's been a nice visit, he'd like to go home.”
Hadiyyah came to stand between Barbara's legs. She crouched so that her chin was level with the table and her nose pressed up to the side of the jar. “You think?” she asked. “Should I let him go? Is he missing his family?”
“Sure,” Barbara said, picking up the child's watercolours for an inspection. “Besides, bees don't belong inside jars. It's not a good idea, and it isn't safe.”
“Why?” Hadiyyah asked.
Barbara looked past the paintings to the artist's father. “Because when you ask a creature to live in a way that's against his nature, someone always ends up getting hurt.”
THEO WASN'T LISTENING, Agatha Shaw concluded. He wasn't listening any more than he'd listened during drinks, during dinner, during coffee, or during the nine o'clock news. His body had been present and he'd even managed to respond in such a way that a less perspicacious woman might have taken for holding up his end of the conversation. But the truth of the matter was that his mind was no more on the redevelopment of Balford-le-Nez than hers was on the current price of bread in Moscow.
“Theodore!” she snapped, and wielded her stick at his legs. He was passing her sofa yet another time, treading from his chair to the open window as if he'd decided to wear a path straight through the Persian carpet before the end of the evening. His grandmother couldn't decide which activity drove her more to distraction: his charade of conversing with her or his newly found interest in the state of the garden. Not that he could see much of the garden in the fast dying light. But there was little doubt that if she demanded to know what was so enthralling outside the window, he would claim to be mourning the death of the lawn.
Her stick failed to stop him, missed him entirely. But when she said, “Theodore Michael Shaw, traipse across this drawing room another time and I'll give you six of the best that you'll never forget. And I'll use this cane to do it. D'you hear me?”
That did the trick. Theo stopped, turned, and looked at her wryly. “Think you're up for that, Gran?” The question was fondly asked, yet he seemed to feel the fondness in spite of himself. He walked no farther to the window, but his gaze went to it nonetheless.
“What the devil is it?” she demanded. “You haven't heard a word I've said all evening. I want this to stop and I want it to stop right now. Tonight.”
“What?” he asked, and to give him credit, he looked sufficiently nonplussed nearly to convince her.
But she was nobody's fool. She hadn't brought up four difficult children—six, if one counted Theo and his pig-headed brother—for nothing. She knew when something was going on, and she knew even better when that something was a something which someone was trying to hide from her.
“Don't be obtuse,” she replied tartly. “You were late … again. You didn't eat more than ten bites at dinner. You ignored the cheese, let your coffee get cold, and for the past twenty minutes when you haven't been wearing a trail through my carpet, you've been watching the clock like a prisoner waiting for visiting hours.”
“I had a late lunch, Gran,” Theo said reasonably. “And this heat's pure hell. How could anyone tuck into salmon pie in this kind of weather?”
“I managed,” she said. “And hot food is appropriate when the weather's beastly. It cools the blood.”
“That sounds like an old wives’ tale to me.”
“Piffle,” she said. “And food isn't the point. You're the point. Your behaviour's the point. You haven't been yourself since—” She paused for thought. How long had it been since Theo hadn't been the Theo she'd known and loved—loved against her wishes, her wisdom, and her inclination—for the last twenty years? A month? Two? He'd started at first with long silences, he'd gone on to longer observations of her when he probably thought she wasn't looking, and he'd mixed these up with nocturnal disappearances, hushed telephone calls, and a disturbing weight loss. “What in the name of Medusa is going on?” she settled on demanding.
He flashed her a smile, but she didn't miss the fact that this rident expression did nothing to alter the bleakness in his eyes. “Gran, believe me. Nothing's going on.” He answered in that soothing tone that doctors always use when attempting to garner the cooperation of a recalcitrant patient.
“Are you up to something?” she asked directly. “Because if you are, I'd like to point out that you've little to gain from obfuscation.”
“I'm not up to anything. I've been thinking about business: how the pier's shaping up and how much money we're going to lose if Gerry DeVitt doesn't have that restaurant opened before the August bank holiday.” He returned to his chair, as if this action would prove his words. He clasped his hands loosely between his knees and gave her what went for his full attention these days.
She continued as if he hadn't spoken. “Obfuscation destroys. And if you wish to argue about that, perhaps three names will emphasise my point: Stephen, Lawrence, Ulricke. All practitioners of the fine art of deception.”
She saw his eyes tighten in a wince that pleased her. She meant to hit him below the belt, and she was glad to know that he'd felt the blow. His brother, his father, and his pea-brained mother, those three were. All of them dissemblers, all of them consequently disinherited, all of them sent into the world to fend for themselves. Two of them were already dead, and the third … who knew what insalubrious end Stephen Shaw would meet in that snake pit that went for a society in Hollywood?
Since Stephen's departure at nineteen years of age, she'd been telling herself that Theo was different. He was sane, reasonable, and enlightened in a way that his immediate family had never been. Upon him she'd learned to place her hopes and to him would go her fortune. If she didn't live to see the complete renaissance of Balford-le-Nez, it didn't matter, because Theo would carry forward her dream. Through him and his efforts, she would live on.
Or so she had thought. But the past few weeks—or was it a month? or two?—had seen the waning of his interest in her affairs. The past few days had shown her that his mind was deeply engaged elsewhere. And the past few hours had indisputably illustrated that she had to act soon to bring him back on track if she wasn't to lose him altogether.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “I don't mean to ignore you. But I'm juggling the pier, the work on the restaurant, the plans for the hotel, this town council business …” As his voice drifted off, his gaze began to travel to that blasted open window, but he seemed to realise what he was doing because he quickly brought himself back to her. “And this heat,” he said. “I'm never my best in this sort of heat.”
She observed him through eyes which she narrowed. Truth or lie? she wondered. He went on.
“I've put a call in about another special town council meeting, by the way. I did that this morning. They'll get back to us, but we can't expect anything soon because of this business with the Asians and the dead man on the Nez.”
This was progress, she admitted, and she felt the first stirrings of encouragement that she'd experienced since she'd had her stroke. It was snail-like and maddening to be sure, but it was progress all the same. Perhaps, after all, Theo was as fully ingenuous as he claimed to be. For the moment, she decided to believe that he was.
“Excellent,” she said. “Excellent, excellent. So by the time we meet with the council again, we'll have the necessary votes in our pockets. I dare say, Theo, I've come to see that disruption of yesterday's meeting as a stroke of divine intervention. This gives us an opportunity to massage each council member personally.”
Theo's attention appeared to be on her, and while she had him interested, she intended to make the most of their conversation. She said, “I've already seen to Treves, by the way. He's ours.”
“Is he?” Theo said politely.
“He is indeed. I spoke to the insufferable man myself this afternoon. Surprised? Well, whyever not speak to him? Why ever not set our ducks in position before we pick up our guns?” She could feel her excitement rising as she spoke. It came upon her like a sexual arousal, heating her up between the legs the way Lewis used to do when he kissed the back of her neck. She suddenly realised that it mattered to her very little whether Theo was listening or not. She'd been holding back her enthusiasm all day—there was absolutely no point in sharing her plans with Mary Ellis—and now she needed and intended to vent it. “It took practically nothing to get him on our side,” she said happily. “He loathes the Pakis as much as we do and he's willing to do anything to help our cause. ‘Shaw Redevelopment serves the interests of the community at large,’ he told me. What he meant was that he'd cut his own throat if that would keep the Pakis in their place. He wants an English name wherever a name's going to be seen: on the pier, on the park, on the hotels, on the leisure centre. He doesn't want Balford to be a stronghold for coloureds. He hates Akram Malik especially,” she added with great satisfaction, and she felt the same frisson of pleasure she'd experienced on the phone when it had first become clear to her that she and the loathsome hotelier had at least one characteristic in common.
Theo looked down at his hands, and she noted that he'd pressed his thumbs together tightly. He said, “Gran, what does it really matter that Akram Malik named a patch of lawn, a fountain, one wooden bench, and a laburnum tree in memory of his mother-in-law? Why's that put you into such an uproar?”
“I am not in an uproar. And I'm certainly not in an uproar about that rodent-filled green of Akram Malik's.”
“Aren't you?” Theo raised his head. “As I recall it, you didn't have any dreams of redevelopment until the Standard ran that article about the park's dedication.”
“Then your recollection is incorrect,” Agatha countered. “We worked on the pier for ten long months before Akram Malik opened that park.”
“The pier, yes. But the rest of it—the hotel, the leisure centre, the buildings along the Marine Parade, the pedestrian walkways, the restoration of the High Street—none of that was even part of the picture until Akram's park. But once you read the story in the Standard, you couldn't rest till we'd hired architects, picked the brains of city planners from here to hell and back, and made sure everyone within hearing distance knew that long-range plans for Balford-le-Nez were in your hands.”
“Well, what of it?” Agatha demanded. “This is my town. I've been here all my life. Who has more right to invest in its future than I?”
“If that's all this was about—investing in Balford's future—I'd agree,” Theo said. “But Balford's future plays a minor role when it comes to your hidden agenda, Gran.”
“Does it?” she asked. “And what, exactly, is my hidden agenda supposed to be?”
“Getting rid of the Pakistanis,” he said. “Making Balford-le-Nez too expensive a location for them to buy property here, freezing them out economically, socially, and culturally by ensuring that there's no land available for them to build a mosque, no shop open in which they can buy halal meats, no employment available where they can find work—”
“I'm providing them work,” Agatha cut in. “I'm providing everyone in this town with work. Who do you expect to work in the hotels, the restaurants, or the shops if not Balford's inhabitants?”
“Oh, I'm certain you've spots allocated for the remaining Pakistanis that you can't drive out. Manual labour, washing dishes, making beds, scrubbing floors. Jobs that'll keep them in their places, ensuring they don't get above themselves.”
“And why should they get above themselves?” Agatha demanded. “They owe their very lives to this country, and it damn well behooves them to keep that in mind.”
“Come on, Gran,” Theo said. “Let's not pretend we're living out the last days of the Raj.”
She bridled at this, but more at the weary tone in which it was said than at the words themselves. All at once, he sounded so much like his father that she wanted to hurl herself at him. She could hear Lawrence in him. At this very moment, she could even see Lawrence. He'd sat in that same chair, solemnly telling her that he meant to leave his studies and marry a Swedish volleyball player twelve years his senior with nothing more to recommend her than enormous bosoms and a leathery tan.
“I'll cut you off without a shilling,” she'd shouted, “without a farthing, without a bloody half-crown.” And it hadn't mattered to her in the least that the old money had gone out of use. All that had mattered was stopping him, and to this end she'd thrown all of her resources. She'd manoeuvred, manipulated, and ultimately managed to do nothing but drive her son from the house and into his grave.
But old habits didn't so much die hard as they refused to die at all without being extirpated through determined effort. And Agatha had never been one to demand of herself the same dedication to expunging one's defects of character that she demanded of others. So she said, “You listen to me, Theo Shaw. If you've a problem with my redevelopment plans and a wish to seek employment elsewhere as a result, just speak up now. You're easily enough replaced, and I'm happy to do it if you find me so repugnant to deal with.”
“Gran.” He sounded dispirited, but she didn't want that. She wanted surrender.
“I'm quite serious. I speak my mind. Always have done. Always will do. So if that's causing you to lose sleep at night, perhaps it's time we each went our own way. We've had a good run of it: twenty years together. That's longer than most marriages last these days. But if you need to go your own way like your brother, go. I'm not holding you back.”
The mention of his brother would serve to remind him of the manner in which his brother had left: with ten pounds and fifty-nine pence in his pocket, to which sum she'd added not one penny in the ten years he'd been gone. Theo rose, and for a terrible moment she thought she'd misjudged him, seeing a need for a maternal bond where he'd long outgrown it. But then he spoke, and she knew she'd won.
“I'll start phoning the council members in the morning,” he said.
She felt her face's rigidity loosen into a smile. “You see, don't you, how we can use that disturbance in the council meeting to our own advantage? We'll win this, Theo. And before we're through, we'll have Shaw in lights all round this town. Think what life will be like for you then. Think of the man you'll be.”
He looked away from her, but not at the window. To the door this time, and to whatever lay beyond it. Despite the heat that seemed to throb in the air, he shuddered. Then he headed towards the door.
“What?” she asked him. “It's nearly ten. Where're you going?”
“To cool off,” he said.
“Where do you expect to do that? It's no cooler outside than it is in this house.”
“I know,” he said. “But the air's fresher, Gran.”
And the tone of his voice gave her an inkling of the cost that was attached to winning.