The Blue Death Read online

  And that meant it was all David Marion’s fault. ‘Little Andy’s going right down the same path as that . that . ’ She could hardly contain her fury, couldn’t bring herself to speak his name. She picked up a drumstick, bit into it savagely.

  Helen knew perfectly well that there was only one person who affected her grandmother this way. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, leave David out of it.’

  ‘What on earth made that boy think he could hack into a university computer? Why would he want to?’ Becky had always liked Little Andy. He had charm as well as a quick wit. She’d helped Lillian get him out of scrapes more than once, hired his lawyers, paid his bail, written letters of recommendation.

  ‘Probably just to prove he could. Lillian keeps telling him there’s nothing he can’t achieve. Maybe he took her too literally.’

  ‘You just like people who get into trouble.’ Becky’s voice trembled with frustration. ‘You mistake bad behaviour for spirit.’

  ‘Grandma, shut up.’

  ‘Shut up yourself. Haven’t you done enough damage already?’

  Helen jumped out of her chair, ran to Becky, knelt down, put her arms around the old woman, nestled her head into the bony shoulder. ‘I don’t mean it, Grandma. It scares me to think I could hurt you. I wouldn’t do that for the world.’

  Becky stroked Helen’s hair. ‘I know, darling. I know.’

  Helen had been sharp-tongued even as a little girl, an only child overindulged by her parents. Now that they were both dead, Becky indulged her too; this kind of bickering had become almost a ritual between them. True, David had added an alien ferocity to it, but Helen was learning the ropes of the Freyl estate. She was a business partner in all but name. She knew Becky was proud of her. She was proud of Becky too, and in general – David aside – they enjoyed each other’s company more than anybody else’s.

  ‘You know what I don’t like about David?’ Helen went on, still nestling into Becky’s shoulder. ‘I go out for a walk, and everything I see reminds me of him. I sit down to work, and a part of my brain stays on him no matter how hard I scold myself. There I am, at a desk when he’s off somewhere else, and I can—’ She broke off, frowned, let out her breath. ‘I can feel that voice on my skin, even though he’s not within miles of me.’

  ‘When I was a girl, we called that sex.’

  ‘I keep trying to think his thoughts. I want to remember what it was like when he was playing around garbage cans with his friend Tony, and I probably hadn’t even been born yet. Fuck the iced tea. I need a glass of wine.’ Helen kissed her grandmother, got a bottle from the kitchen, opened it, poured it, handed a glass to Becky. ‘You know, Grandma, sometimes I don’t even want to touch him. I just want to look.’

  ‘You’re not in love with this man, Helen. You’re obsessed by him.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever been in love?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But not like this?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Not even with Grandpa?’

  ‘I was twenty-eight years old. Back then, a woman of twenty-eight had to get a move on, and I was determined to marry “up”.’

  Becky’s family in Atlanta had been shabby genteel; the Freyls were landed American aristocracy, and the young Rebecca had been brilliant as well as beautiful, the same high cheekbones she’d passed on to her granddaughter, the same deceptive fragility, the same dimples. She’d worked her way through the University of Georgia and gone on to manage Vogue magazine in New York.

  As she and Helen ate lunch, Helen eased Becky away from her fury at David and the wheelchair by probing for details of what it had been like to come to Springfield as a bride, an outsider who’d captured the most eligible bachelor in town. Becky confessed that she’d had to work hard for acceptance. She’d set up a card catalogue with an entry for everybody she met. She cross-referenced family members and colleagues. She kept track of jobs, hobbies, political opinions, what kind of liquor they drank, what foods they preferred. She sent gifts for birthdays and flowers for anniversaries. In two years, her dinner table was the envy of all the other wives.

  It was only a start. She’d arrived in Springfield without illusions. She knew it was a provincial backwater, but she could see no reason why it should stay that way. She didn’t bother with the men; tradition dictated that they concern themselves with little beyond power and liquor. She set up a women’s group she called the Springfield Arts Society; its stated aim was to bring culture to a cultural wasteland. They discussed literature, history, art, how to dress, how to furnish a room. But Becky’s ambitions were far greater than that. She and her Society began work in a ladylike, behind-the-scenes way to restore the Old Capitol building to the glory it had been when the town’s most famous son, Abraham Lincoln, had argued cases in it, served as a representative in it, lain in state in it as an assassinated President.

  Back in those days, it had been a grand structure on a charmingly small scale, a classic of American political architecture: high dome, fluted columns, wide sweep of steps, proportions straight out of ancient Athens. Town planners in search of extra office space had hoisted it up and shoved a ground floor beneath it, a hugely expensive undertaking that turned it into a clumsy caricature of what it had been. The Arts Society raised the money – state-wide campaigns in schools, shops, newspapers – and then supervised the restoration work itself. When the building shone as it once had, the Society turned their attention to a university, an art gallery, a museum, even a symphony orchestra. Over the decades, a state capital of yokels and under-the-table deals grew into a sophisticated population with a tourist industry centred around the Old Capitol and Lincoln himself.

  The women had dabbled in politics right from the outset. They’d campaigned for Democratic candidates at all levels of government, knowing full well that they’d never achieve their aims without some leverage and some very persuasive lobbying. In general they’d chosen well. They’d fought hard for John F. Kennedy, and they spotted Barack Obama early, worked to make him a senator, quietly manoeuvred him into announcing his candidacy on the steps of the building that had been their first triumph half a century before.

  Nobody could say either the Kennedy or the Obama election had been easy. But neither had been anywhere near as difficult as Jimmy Zemanski’s.

  ‘Jimmy Zemanski!’ Becky said, turning her outrage on him as she and Helen reached this point in the conversation. They’d finished lunch. They’d finished the bottle of wine and were drinking the coffee Helen had made. ‘I ought to put him over my knee and spank his bottom,’ Becky ranted. ‘How dare he try to privatize our water? He’s a Democrat! I backed him precisely not to privatize. Am I supposed to be that dumb? Is that what he thinks? He didn’t even have the guts to warn me first, much less consult me. He has no idea what he’s getting us—’

  ‘David!’ Helen cried, jumping up from the table.

  Becky turned her chair around, expecting to see her beloved granddaughter wrapped around the man, but they stood facing one another at arm’s length, a physical distancing that made the bond between them look too intense to risk public exposure. The sight of it made Becky feel physically sick. ‘Even Jimmy would have made you a better match,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘And a good afternoon to you too, Mrs Freyl,’ David said, inclining his head in her direction.

  ‘How can you say these things, Grandma?’ Helen burst out. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘I speak my mind, Helen, just as you do. I do what I can do. When I can’t, I complain. Please don’t smoke in here.’ David was taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

  Helen laughed abruptly, took the pack of cigarettes from David, lit one, drew on it. ‘You’re the one who’s met her match in Jimmy.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Becky said.

  ‘You threaten. You rant. But it’s only talk. Kid stuff. Anybody can do that to anybody.’

  ‘I see. And what would you have me do?

  ‘If you’re so eage
r for action, get the bastard. You want to slap somebody down? Slap Jimmy. You got him elected: you take him down. Leave David alone.’

  ‘It’s stupid for you to smoke,’ David said as they left the house. He took the cigarette from her mouth. Not all that long ago, Helen had had surgery for a collapsed lung.

  In Becky’s eyes, the lung too was David’s fault. They’d been rammed in a car chase. True, Becky had hired the man doing the chasing, and she’d hired him for the express purpose of ‘protecting’ Helen from David. The man had perhaps been a little overzealous in carrying out his duties, but David was the one driving the car with Helen in it. The impact had collapsed her lung, and he had escaped without a scratch.

  Which in Becky’s eyes made him responsible for the entire episode. The doctors’ warnings to Helen had been severe: cigarettes were out. For good.

  ‘Christ!’ Helen said to David. ‘You too! What is this? Beat Up on Helen Day?’

  But she let him take the cigarette out of her mouth.

  Helen loved explosions even though they terrified her; they made her feel alive. That’s what David did too. They were one of the reasons she’d become a physicist: Dr Helen Freyl, MA from Vassar, PhD from Columbia University with the rare accolade of a published thesis. She’d wanted to know why things blow up, what were the preconditions, what made matter unstable, what triggered it, gunpowder, dynamite, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion. Her studies had become her insight into David, and she sensed an explosion ahead. What terrified her about this one was that David might end up dead himself because of it.

  She walked with him in silence – carefully because her chest was still sore from the crash and the surgery that had followed – to where they lived, a house they’d rented just beyond the garage they were converting. Helen longed for the work to be finished. She didn’t care one way or the other about the temporary house, but she knew that David hated it. It had Venetian drapes and gilded portraits. A lifetime in prison doesn’t equip a person to process so many things. They lie in wait for him, rebel against him, as capricious as people.

  As they approached the front door, she could feel the tension rising in him. ‘Let’s go for a drive,’ she said. ‘David?’ She touched his arm.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere.’

  ‘I’ve already been somewhere.’

  ‘You haven’t driven my present yet.’

  Maybe objects and David didn’t go well together, but cars were different, crash or no crash. An English 1952 Riley is a real gangster car, sleek and 1930ish, exciting, dangerous. She’d given him one as a wedding present, a right-hand-drive model, still wearing its British plates.

  The planes of his face relaxed. ‘You got somewhere special in mind?’

  ‘I don’t care. Anywhere. Just go.’

  The Riley’s doors opened backwards, hinged behind front seats that still gave off a hint of leather smell. It wasn’t air conditioned, but the heat of the day diminished as they headed south away from Springfield. They didn’t talk, and towards evening the quiet became so intense that Helen heard a meadowlark across the cornfields just as David had heard one on the banks of the Mississippi.

  She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Let’s really go somewhere. I want to see Lake Michigan from the Wisconsin side. I have an ancient photograph: my great-grandfather floating in a tyre, white walrus moustache and all. He was a lawyer just like Daddy.’ She was fairly sure they were heading south. Her sense of direction was poor at best, but the sun was disappearing off to her right, and they’d been driving this way since they set out – which meant Wisconsin had to be hundreds of miles in the opposite direction. ‘We’ll find a cottage. Cool off in the water. If Grandma can play guilt trip games with a wheelchair, we can play hookey. Log fire in the evening. Couple of cans of beer for you. Bottle of wine for me. Just the two of us.’

  David was already swinging the car around. ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘Not so as you’d notice.’

  ‘Dog paddle?’ she asked.

  He gave her a wry glance along with the nod. ‘Not even that in more than twenty years.’

  ‘David Marion! What about after you got out? No? Not once in the whole time? Why?’

  ‘Shame. Pride. Maybe envy. Sloth.’

  ‘The hardest part is just staying afloat.’

  ‘Is it really?’

  ‘I’ll teach you the rest.’

  They drove through the night, taking turns at the wheel. By the next morning, they were deep into Wisconsin and as though to justify Helen’s inspiration, the very first cottage they looked at was perfect. There were trees behind it. Lake Michigan stretched out in front of it. Waves lapped gently. There was nobody for miles around.

  They spent their days there doing what newlyweds are supposed to do, neither able to let the other out of sight for more than minutes at a time, meals interrupted by scrambles to the large bed, swimming lessons cut short in shallow water and again on soft leaves beneath the trees.

  9

  SPRINGFIELD: Monday, a week later

  ‘Isn’t a week long enough?’ Becky almost shouted her frustration down the telephone to Helen, who lay on a blanket on the front porch of the cottage, her naked body entwined around David’s. ‘I need you here.’ Helen had called as soon as she and David set out for the lake and every day since then. ‘The Springfield Arts Society needs you.’

  ‘What for?’ Helen said. ‘I’m not even a member of the damned thing.’

  ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘What was?’

  ‘Slapping Jimmy down. He didn’t even consult me. How dare he?’

  ‘I was just angry, Grandma.’

  ‘You were right. I will do it. We will do it.’

  ‘I thought the Springfield Arts Society was all about culture.’

  ‘Day after tomorrow. Three o’clock. Donna’s house.’ Helen didn’t reply at once. ‘Helen?’ Becky said. ‘I mean it. I need you.’

  Helen turned sideways to grin at David. ‘I’ll be there on one condition.’

  ‘Granted, whatever it is.’

  ‘I get to bring David with me.’

  There was a long pause. Helen rearranged herself over him, touched his nose (broken at least once in his life) with the tip of her finger, then followed the scar that ran down his cheek and under his chin.

  ‘The Springfield Arts Society is for women,’ Becky said tartly.

  ‘I thought it was about keeping brains active. David’s brain needs keeping alive as much as mine does – not that I’m not too interested in brains at the moment. That Society of yours is getting old. About time for some new blood, don’t you think?’

  ‘I can’t change the rules. You know that.’

  ‘You can change anything you goddamned please.’ Helen’s hand had crossed the expanse of David’s chest and reached his ribs. She smiled down at him and said into her mobile, ‘Grandma, I’m not letting this man out of my sight.’ She hung up before Becky could reply.

  Back in Springfield, Becky looked irritably at the telephone in her hand. What could the girl mean? Why hadn’t she even said ‘goodbye’? David would be insolent. He would be impertinent. It was all very inconvenient, and yet Helen had been as right about Becky’s power to change the Springfield Arts Society rules as about the need to slap Jimmy down. When Becky had set up the Society all those years ago and written its constitution, she’d limited membership to women her own age, either from old Springfield families or married into them as she had.

  Years passed, and the group began to get stodgy. Becky suggested they draft in their daughters to liven things up. They didn’t want to. Becky ‘reinterpreted’ the constitution she’d written, and invited their daughters herself. When mothers and daughters together resisted the inclusion of outsiders, Becky again ‘reinterpreted’ the constitution. A middle-aged organization needed fresh blood, just as Helen said an old one did; and Springfield’s population had come to include h
ighly respected university families.

  The more Becky thought about slapping Jimmy down, the more she thought that perhaps Helen was right yet again. Perhaps the Springfield Arts Society was only the place to begin. This was a different species of activity. It was a protest. The Arts Society had never gone in for that kind of thing before. But who would be most useful?

  The first person she thought of was Aloysia Gonzaga.

  Aloysia was on loan from Oxford University to Springfield’s branch of the University of Illinois, giving graduate lectures on hydrology and microbiology. Which is to say she knew about water. The trouble was, Becky disliked the woman. Despite the exotic name, Aloysia was English, niece of some of Hugh’s friends. Becky disapproved of the English: ‘a dirty people who can’t manage their economy’ was her tart assessment. She didn’t like their accents either; they sounded ‘snippity snippity’ to her. The trace of one in Hugh had always distressed her, and the touch of it in David Marion was yet another reason for recoiling from him. But that was the least of Aloysia’s flaws. She fell into that category of people Becky called ‘monkey smart’. Aloysia was always on the lookout for weaknesses she could exploit. She built hidden agendas around them and delighted in springing them on people.

  She was the one who’d warned Becky that Jimmy was negotiating with private water companies. She’d had one of those little cat-smiles as she said so. Becky knew that cat smile; she’d seen it before. It’s why she’d believed the warning, and it’s also why she’d been too outraged to ask for details. Now she needed the detail. All of it. Why had the Englishwoman passed this information on to somebody she knew would make Jimmy’s life as difficult as possible because of it? What was there in it for her? Why had Jimmy told her so much of his plans in the first place?