Lynne Pemberton – Dancing With Shadows (страница 2)

Then Rebecca smiled, too, for the first time. ‘You remind me of your pa, except the way you speak. You don’t talk the same as you did, Jay; you’ve got a fancy accent.’

Jay made no comment, he couldn’t be bothered to explain that he’d been nicknamed ‘the Gent’ in prison, having acquired the new intonation from Hal, the ex-butler from England who’d poisoned his employer – some rich old dame who’d left him a couple of million bucks in her will.

As Rebecca’s smile faded, her mouth slackened and in that moment she looked profoundly sad. Jay thought about his father, then cursed himself and hated his mother for mentioning that he looked like Ellis Kaminsky. It was the first time he’d thought about his father since ten years ago when he’d come across an inmate who had met an Ellis Kaminsky while doing a prison stretch in Illinois. Jay had denied any connection. Ellis Kaminsky had sired him, but that was his only claim to fatherhood. For the first twelve years of Jay’s life, his father had been conspicuous by his absence. A long-suffering Rebecca had always quietly defended her husband. Your father works hard to get nice things for you and your sister. He has to spend time away from home to earn more money so we can have a better house. The move to a bigger house never came, nor did the much promised gifts, like the fishing pole Jay had asked for. After frequent similar disappointments, Jay had begged, then prayed, and eventually given up. Until the day when Kaminsky had left home to work on a construction site in Kansas, promising to bring the pole back for Jay and a bicycle for his sister Fran. They never received the presents, because Ellis Kaminsky never returned. Jay had been fourteen; Fran, twelve. After that their mother had slowly deteriorated, losing sense of who or what she was, given to fits of prolonged depression and introspection. The ‘head of the house’ role had automatically fallen on Jay’s shoulders. He’d tried to console his needy mother and be a father to young Fran. But although he’d tried to make everyone happy, he’d tried too hard and failed miserably. The effort had fuelled both his hatred for his father and his own will to succeed. Perhaps now I can finally make amends, Jay thought. But even as the thought was born, he doubted it was possible. Ellis Kaminsky had taken a large piece of Rebecca’s heart when he’d left, and Jay knew his mother had never completely recovered. And Fran was lost to him; lost to herself, if the stories his mother told were true. Sometimes he doubted this, because on each occasion when he’d enquired about his sister, his mother had been evasive to the point of downright secrecy. Fran was living in Florida, so Rebecca said. Alone, and working as a waitress. Five years after his imprisonment, Fran had moved away from Sand Springs in Montana to California. She’d only visited Jay three times after that and her weekly letters had become monthly – quickly scribbled paragraphs – gradually dwindling to annual events before stopping completely. Where was she now, he wondered, as he was gripped by a vivid recollection of his freckle-faced, plump-cheeked sister – her single pigtail, the same colour as the corn, flying out behind her. It was an age-old image, yet the only one he had. He felt a sharp pang of sadness at the realization that he doubted whether he would be able to pick her out in a crowded room now. The cliché said it all for him … Too much water under the bridge.

Jay inclined his head towards the entrance to the hotel. ‘You want to come in, Mom?’ He wasn’t sure he wanted her to join him, but he was afraid to walk into the lobby alone. He felt his heart hammering. Get a grip, it’s only a hotel for Christ’s sake.

When Rebecca shook her head, he felt immensely relieved. The prospect of trying to make small talk with this stranger, his mother, was too daunting. He wanted her to go, and go quickly, but inwardly berated himself for his churlishness.

‘Naw, I’ve got a long drive back. Anyway, Jay, I think you’ve got some adjusting to do. Pick up some of the pieces. You got your release, your freedom. I never thought I’d see the day. It’s going to take some time to feel right on you, and you don’t want yer old ma getting in the way.’

Jay nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right, but some time I’d like to talk; just you and I.’ He held out his hand.

She took it, tentatively at first, then grasped it, and held on very tight as if she was drowning. ‘I know, son, I want to talk, too; there’s a lot to say, twenty-five years of catching up to be done. But not right now. You know me, I never was much good at talking.’ She no longer met his eyes and with a faraway expression on her face, she looked into the middle distance. ‘I’m sick, Jay, been sick for a good while now. I didn’t write you, no need, you got troubles of yer own.’ Still gripping him tight, she blinked rapidly.

He looked at the back of her hand, a patchwork of white skin, knotted veins, and dark brown liver spots. ‘Sick with what?’

‘Colon trouble, last year they gave me a handy little purse to shit into. But lately it’s not been working so well, and they want to operate again. So who knows, I might get a classy designer version this time round.’

Her stab at humour failed to mask the dread resignation he detected in her small voice. She was dying; of that he was certain. He didn’t want her to die, but he knew he wouldn’t miss her. But then who would he miss? He thought about the few friends he’d made inside, and that was it. Concerned, but not devastated, Jay reproached himself and said, ‘I’ll make some enquiries, Mom, find the best surgeon, and we’ll get you fixed up with an appointment.’

‘You’ll do no such thing. I don’t want any fancy docs. I’m OK with the one I’ve got. Charles Cornwell is a good man, he’s doing fine by me. Listen, son, I ain’t getting any younger and we’ve all got to go some time, it’s only a matter of how.’ Jay opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it. ‘I’ll tell you all about it when you come home.’

Jay thought about home; where was home? The ramshackle wooden house in Sand Springs, Montana that poverty had hijacked long before he’d left? It was where he was born, where he’d started his journey, and he had no intention of ending it there. His mother had refused to leave, even after he’d had his first royalty cheque, and had offered to buy her a new apartment near her sister in a better neighbourhood.

‘I’ve got a few things to sort out here,’ he said, returning to the present. ‘As soon as I’ve done that, in a couple of weeks, I’ll come home, I promise.’

They both knew he was lying.

‘Well I ain’t goin’ nowhere so when you’re good and ready, son …’ She paused. ‘Then we’ll talk.’

For a few minutes neither moved. They held hands, like lovers reluctant to part, saying nothing, lost in thought. Had they compared those thoughts, they would have been surprised at how similar they were. Both were of deep regret.

‘This is great stuff, Jay!’

Ed Hooper was tapping a deep pile of foolscap on top of his battered desk. It was the manuscript of Jay’s latest novel. With the flat of his other hand the agent stroked the mahogany surface, thinking about the day he’d bought the desk. Spring 1968. His buddy, Abe Lesser, had been selling second-hand furniture at the time and Ed recalled how he’d haggled with Abe, who’d insisted the desk was early nineteenth century. Ed had beat him down to a hundred and twenty dollars; more than he could afford at the time. The antique was intended for a big space, and it had incongruously filled his shoebox office in SoHo. He’d named it ‘Samson’, after Bill Samson his first client, and in 1976 Samson had moved uptown with him to his new office on 76th and York. The grander premises suited Big Samson admirably; solid and important, the desk dominated the twenty-foot-square room. Samson had hosted six secretaries’ butts; been party to ten mega deals, hundreds of major deals, and thousands of minor ones. One crazy night after a party, Ed had even had a blow job under the desk; and he’d fucked his first wife over it. Samson could tell a tale or two. It was part of him, the one piece of furniture he’d ever felt really attached to, the one constant in his life. Samson looked good when cluttered; two cigar boxes, one for the legal cheroots the other for black market Cubans, helped the effect. As did a monogrammed ashtray from Ed’s mother, and the eclectic mix of junk he’d collected or been given over the years, including an engraved golf ball on a silver plinth from his teenage son, Josh. And a framed photograph of himself, and Josh at fifteen, on a fishing trip in Key West. Ed liked to put his feet on Samson, happy in the knowledge that he wouldn’t receive a scathing comment from his ex-wife Carole, who had repeatedly asked why he insisted on keeping such a beat-up old relic. Thank God he’d resisted her influence; he liked his office exactly as it was. The floor was carpeted in moss green; the walls were painted white and left unadorned; there was a free-standing rosewood veneered bookcase full of titles he’d handled, and of twentieth-century classics. The room also boasted a couple of leather chairs picked up wholesale twelve years before, and a Tudor oak chest acquired by Carole in a furniture sale. She’d kicked up a stink when he’d used it as a coffee table. But then Carole, after six months of marriage, had kicked up about mostly everything he did. Ed narrowed his eyes, registering the ironic fact that next week he’d be signing divorce papers on the very same spot where he’d first had Carole six years ago almost to the day. Bitch. Double-crossing, money-grabbing, beautiful, devious bitch.