The Sleeping and the Dead Page 8

  Hannah didn’t say that she remembered things rather differently. They’d called Roger spooky because of the way he looked at them. At the hems of their skirts which were still very short at the time, at the shirts bursting at the buttons over newly formed chests. There were stories that he’d been caught staring through the gym window at third-form gymnasts, at the girls in their knickers and airtex vests doing straddle jumps on the box and cartwheels on the beam.

  Sally didn’t go with them to the school for the reunion. She said she’d meet them there. She had to nip back to town. It was work. The editor was away and there was a press conference she needed to cover. Again Hannah felt she was making her work sound grander than it was.

  Still, she was pleased to go in on her own, with only Rosie to keep her company. Sally would have rushed round introducing her to everyone, and she wanted a moment of anonymity. She wanted to stand just inside the door and look for Michael. She had dreamt that he would be there. If she was honest with herself, that was what the trip had been all about from the start. Michael was what had kept her away from the town for all those years and now it was Michael who had brought her back. When Roger dropped them off at the school – it seemed that he was too busy to attend the party – the futility of the venture hit her. She was embarrassed that she had allowed her fantasy to develop this far.

  Michael Grey had come to the school when Hannah was in the lower sixth. He was a year older than the rest of them but for some reason had been placed in their year. She remembered having been given a number of reasons for that – he had been living abroad, had been ill, there had been a family problem. Still she didn’t know which, if any, of them had been true. Certainly he hadn’t been asked to retake the year because he was thick. He was quick and conscientious and the teachers loved him. He was doing art, English and biology, but art was his thing. He noticed the way things and people looked. She remembered the big, battered portfolio he used to cart around, the way he always had a smear of paint on his face.

  So she collected her name badge, stood just inside the door and looked around. He wasn’t in the room. She saw that immediately. Even after nearly thirty years she would have recognized him. She didn’t think that was self-delusion. She would have stood there longer, but Rosie gave her a shove in the back.

  ‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘Do the business.’

  It turned out to be easier than Hannah had expected. Sally still hadn’t arrived but Hannah was greeted by people who knew her, who were pleasant enough to say that she’d hardly changed. The name badges were in sufficiently large print to allow the possibility that this was a kind fiction, that they remembered the face only after reading her name, but soon she felt less nervous.

  This hall was newly built when she was at school. Previously the dining hall had been used for everything. For the first time the students had somewhere for assembly and drama that didn’t smell of school dinners. She recalled her first speech day there. Some sixth-form boys always ran a book on the length of the headmaster’s lecture. Parents were invited and when Hannah won a prize for English her mother had turned up. Her husband had just died and people were still talking about it so it was a brave thing for her to do, but she was the only woman to be wearing a hat and Hannah wished that she’d stayed away.

  The new hall was where school plays were performed. In Hannah’s final year, Michael was Macbeth. He looked like a Viking warrior with his long white hair and papier-mâché armour. Jenny Graves was Lady Macbeth. People said she was very good, but Hannah had been prompting and too busy following every line to notice individual performances. What she did remember was the knife, because she’d helped with props too. She didn’t know where Mr Westcott had found it, but it was seriously sharp. One of the first years was messing around and cut herself. Hannah thought that nowadays, when everyone was so conscious of health and safety, it wouldn’t be allowed.

  Once she’d persuaded herself that of course it would have been impossible for Michael to be there, Hannah even started to enjoy herself. At first the music was far too loud for sensible conversation but someone persuaded the disc jockey to turn it down. She could catch up on news of people who had once been close friends. No one mentioned her father. She supposed, even in a town as small as this, that had been forgotten long ago.

  She was talking to Paul Lord when Sally arrived. Hannah saw her from the corner of her eye, but continued the conversation. In school Paul had been something of a figure of fun – a spotty scientist, too conventional for his age, more conventional even than her. He had become rather handsome. Certainly he was married. He mentioned a wife and child. It seemed he had his own business and was doing rather well.

  ‘What happened to that blond lad you used to knock around with?’ he said suddenly. ‘Did he go away to art school in the end, or did he settle for university?’

  Hannah said calmly that she had no idea. Then Sally interrupted them quite rudely, taking Hannah’s arm and dragging her away. Something had excited her. She could hardly contain herself. But she kept her face serious.

  ‘There’s something you have to know.’

  ‘What is it?’

  She turned everything into a drama. Hannah was expecting a piece of local gossip. Someone had run away with someone else’s wife. She should know not to mention it in front of the people involved.

  ‘The body in the lake,’ Sally said.

  Hannah must have looked at her stupidly. It wasn’t at all what she was expecting.

  ‘You had heard that they’d found a body in the lake?’

  Hannah remembered a snatch of a radio report. ‘Yes. It came to light because the water level’s so low.’

  ‘That was what the press conference was about. The police have got a positive ID at last. Dental records or something. It’s too horrible to think about.’ She shivered theatrically. ‘It’s Michael Grey. He’d been down there for nearly thirty years.’

  She was whispering. Perhaps she wanted to add to the theatre of the occasion. Perhaps she didn’t want to spoil the party. Hannah felt the room spin around her.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ Sally said sharply. ‘You’ll have to speak to the police. We all will, but you’re most likely to have something useful to say.’ She looked at Hannah, waiting for a sensible response before adding impatiently, ‘Michael Grey was murdered.’

  Hannah remained silent. She could hardly say that the news had come as something of a relief.

  Chapter Nine

  So far, Rosie thought, she’d been very good, very much the mummy’s girl, putting on a clean frock, tying back her hair in a French plait, saying what a brilliant time she’d been having.

  The school was pretty much what she’d expected, comprehensive now, but still to Rosie’s eyes, rather grand. Her high school on the coast was a seventies glass and concrete slum. The window frames had warped and the roof leaked. This was a stone building, approached by a drive through trees. There was a couple of new blocks, a scattering of mobile classrooms, but still it was hard to imagine kids dealing dope in the toilets or sniffing glue behind the bike sheds. More Mallory Towers than Grange Hill. Rosie wasn’t sure about being there. ‘Look,’ she had said. ‘I’d just be in the way.’ Hannah had given her a look so geeky that Rosie could have strangled her but not deserted her.

  They had been early of course. Her mother was always early. It drove Rosie crazy. There had been people in the hall, but they were still setting out food and glasses. Rosie had taken her mother’s arm. She was shaking.

  ‘Why don’t you give me a guided tour of the place before we go in?’

  They had walked together round the outside of the building, peering in through windows. Hannah had pointed out the domestic-science block, the room where Roger had taught Latin, the sixth-form common-room. Rosie had listened. She had felt supportive and grown up. She had even wondered if she should bring up the subject of Eve and Jonathan – they had never really discussed it – but she hadn’t wanted to spoil things and had
left Hannah to her memories.

  When they returned the party had begun. The hall doubled as a theatre and it was blacked out by heavy curtains and lit by coloured spots. Outside the sun was still shining. On the stage sat a DJ playing seventies music. The lines on his face were so deep that they seemed chiselled. It was hard to tell whether his head was bald or shaved. But he still seemed younger than the people standing awkwardly in the hall, juggling paper plates and plastic glasses. He put on a David Bowie. ‘Life on Mars’. It had always been one of Rosie’s favourites and she was itching to dance. If Joe had been there she’d have dragged him on to the floor to get things moving.

  There’d been a bit of a queue at the door, where a fat woman stood behind a table doling out laminated name badges. She was short sighted and had to squint like a mole over the table to find the one she was looking for. Hannah had found her own. Hannah Meek. How bloody appropriate, Rosie had thought. The fat woman had stared at them, as if the name or her mother’s face should trigger a memory, but the effort had seemed too much for her because she just shook her head, smiled vaguely and let them walk on into the hall.

  At first everything was as tedious and civilized as Rosie had expected it to be. She was introduced to old friends of her mother’s. She smiled a lot, was polite and dutiful. When she laughed she felt as if she were making too much noise. The people she met seemed frozen in middle age. It was impossible to imagine them being yelled at by a teacher in this hall, or sitting at small tables to take exams. They talked about their children, the iniquities of student fees and student loans, their homes and their foreign holidays. All the time the rhythm of the music nipped at her ankles and made her want to sway away from them back into the middle of the floor.

  This is your music, she wanted to say. Doesn’t it take you back to how you were?

  And sometimes she saw a woman or a man with dreamy eyes, who would look at her with a start, as if they were staring at themselves or a girl they fancied. But it didn’t last, and when someone did start the dancing it was a peculiar shuffle as if they all had arthritic knees or a broom handle strapped to their spines.

  Then she looked up at the stage and saw the DJ, who must have been at least as old as her mother and the others in the room, but who didn’t seem it. He seemed to be laughing at them too. She moved through the dancers and hoisted herself on to the stage so her legs dangled over the edge. He didn’t look at her.

  ‘A bit young for this, aren’t you?’

  ‘I came with my mum.’

  ‘Who was she, then?’ Now he did turn to eye her up. ‘I might know her.’

  ‘Did you come to this school too?’ For some reason it seemed unlikely. He looked too different from the smartly dressed men and women. She thought he must be a refugee from the city.

  ‘No, not bright enough. I was at the secondary modern. But I used to hang around with some of them.’

  ‘Hannah Meek,’ she said. ‘That was what my mother was called then.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can see.’

  ‘Can you?’ She had seen the occasional photo of her mother as a young woman and saw no resemblance. Her mother was so reined in. Her features were small and sharp.

  ‘She was skinnier of course.’

  She felt her face colour. Most people were skinnier than her. Hannah said she was over sensitive. ‘Carry on like that and you’ll end up like Melanie Gillespie.’ As if she wouldn’t have adored to be the same weight as Mel.

  ‘But you’re bonnier,’ the DJ said after some consideration. Rosie could have kissed him.

  ‘Can you recognize her?’ she said, falling into the joky, flirty voice she used with the older punters at the Prom. She didn’t have to shout. Someone had moaned about the music being too loud and he’d turned it down. He scanned the room but so briefly that she thought he wasn’t really bothered.

  ‘Can’t see much at all in this light,’ he said.

  There was a bit of a scuffle at the door as Sally came in. She pushed her way through the blackout curtain and was silhouetted briefly against the light outside. The woman behind the table knew her and tried to offer her a badge but Sally ignored her. The DJ was watching the scene too, with the same detached amusement as when he’d been looking at the dancing.

  ‘That’s Sally Spence,’ Rosie said, wanting his attention again. ‘She’s my mum’s best mate. We’re staying at her hotel tonight.’

  ‘Oh, I know Sal very well. When you see her say Chris sends his love.’

  The track he was playing came to an end. He murmured a few words into the microphone. No one seemed to be listening. Hannah was deep in conversation with a tall man, dressed in black. He had more style than the rest of them and Rosie might have fancied him if he’d been twenty years younger. Suddenly Sally broke in on the couple. She said a few words to Hannah then steered her away from him. From her position on the stage Rosie watched. Caught in a livid green spotlight, with Roxy Music in the background, she saw her mother’s face crumple. The normally sharp features fell in on themselves. Sally led her out of the room and Rosie followed. At the door she stopped and looked up at the stage. Chris, the DJ, gave her a little wave and a knowing grin.

  Outside it was still light, and at The Old Rectory four guests sat on the flagged terrace having drinks before a late dinner. Sally had driven them back from the reunion immediately. Rosie thought it was a fuss about nothing. Sally playing the drama queen. An old body dragged out of the lake. What could that have to do with her mother?

  Roger insisted that they shouldn’t decide anything until after dinner and Sally had deferred to him. Hannah seemed to think she had no right to express an opinion. Rosie thought Roger had been transformed. That afternoon he’d been a crabby and grey old Latin teacher. Now, talking to his guests, dressed in a brocade waistcoat and floppy bow-tie, he was in his element. When they arrived he was taking a tray of drinks to a couple in the lounge and he sat beside them for a moment to chat. He flattered the woman without annoying her husband, camping it up a little to make himself harmless. Rosie, who was no mean actor herself, appreciated the show. She knew the effort which went into a performance.

  Over dinner Sally and her mother talked in a series of elliptical comments which made little sense to her. At one point Sally said to Roger, ‘But you must remember Michael Grey, even if you didn’t teach him. Everyone knew Michael.’

  Roger stared into his wine. ‘Of course I remember him,’ he said in a sad, solemn voice. Then he made an excuse to go into the kitchen and when he returned he was his old self, solicitous and funny.

  At the end of the meal they were the only people left in the dining-room. The main lights were switched off. Their table was lit by a wall lamp with an engraved glass shade, which could have covered a gas lamp. The room had been designed to look like a Victorian parlour, with glossy-leafed pot plants, red plush, heavy furniture and silver. For Rosie it took on a nightmare quality. She prided herself on being able to hold her drink, but Roger had filled her glass every time it was empty and by the end of the meal her head was swimming. She listened to snatches of the women’s conversation, and the image of the white corpse from the lake caught her attention immediately and stayed with her.

  It was partly to shake off this feeling of melodrama, partly because she was so drunk that when the thought came into her head she couldn’t stop it coming out, that she interrupted their conversation.

  ‘Oh, by the way, Chris sends his love.’

  ‘Chris?’ Her mother seemed puzzled.

  ‘The DJ.’

  Hannah looked at Sally. ‘That was Chris?’

  ‘Didn’t you recognize him?’ Sally seemed pleased. ‘He hasn’t worn very well, has he?’ Then she seemed to think Rosie deserved an explanation. ‘Chris,’ she said, ‘is my unmissed ex-husband.’

  Soon after, Rosie left them to it. Roger winked and wrapped a half-drunk bottle of wine in a napkin for her to take with her. Hannah would have objected if she’d noticed but she was too preoccupied to
see what was going on.

  In her room Rosie drew the curtains. The window was open and she heard young voices, smelled the grilling flesh of a barbecue. By the edge of the lake someone was having a party. She switched on the television and flicked through the channels, but nothing held her interest for long.

  She poured wine into a beaker from the bathroom and wished she were outside. Leaving the set on, but with the sound turned right down, she dialled the Prom on her mobile. Frank answered.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘It’s me.’

  He recognized her voice. She wondered idly if he’d know all his part-time staff by voice. ‘Good God, girl,’ he said. ‘Can’t you keep away from the place? I thought it was your night off.’

  ‘Sad, isn’t it?’ She thought it really was sad.

  ‘You’re pissed,’ he said. It was a statement of fact.

  ‘Shit, Frank, you sound like my mum. Is anyone in?’

  ‘Can’t you hear them?’ He must have held the receiver over the bar. The roar was deafening.

  ‘Not anyone. Anyone I know.’

  ‘Nah. They were in earlier. The whole crowd.’

  ‘Except Mel and Joe.’ She thought they’d be in Portugal by now, sitting by the pool under the orange trees.

  ‘I’ve got some news about them.’ He was like an old woman about gossip. He paused, tormenting her, knowing she’d be gagging for the information.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re still here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mel refused to go, didn’t she.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She refused to go on holiday. They called in here on their way to the airport. Bags all packed. It was supposed to be just to say goodbye. Then all of a sudden she threw a wobbly. She said her parents wanted to get rid of her. The holiday was a trick to get her out of the country. They never intended to let her back.’

  She kept her voice flat. ‘Was Joe OK?’