Coffin’s Ghost

‘Touch and go, touch and go.’

They chatted for a while.

‘A friend of yours looked in on us while you were in hospital,’ Albie said conversationally. ‘Georgie Freedom.’

‘No friend of mine.’ Stella’s, perhaps. ‘Surprised you let him in. Or out.’

‘Felt like keeping him there but he said. No, he was taking a tour because of a TV series he was planning.’ In fact. Freedom had been inside for a bit while being questioned and was now out pending an appeal.

‘Think of him as a toad,’ said Coffin. ‘We’ll step on him and squeeze him in the end.’

They both knew secrets about each other, small things, nothing much, the sort of thing men say to each other as they drink. Women don’t do this sort of confessing, they only pass on what they want known.

And the governor knew one big secret.

‘Love to Stella,’ said Albie, signing off. ‘I’m going to ask her to put on a Christmas show for the lads.’

I’m sure she will.’

‘A great girl, you’re lucky there.’

‘I know it,’ said Coffin.

He was sitting opposite her now in their tower sitting room, where the windows were wide open to catch what there was of moving air. There were windows on both sides, since this had once been a church tower in a church where symmetry was all, thus a smart breeze swept through the room.

There must be a window open on the staircase somewhere. That reminded him of a question.

‘Who was the man just exiting with a vacuum cleaner when I came in? Was it our vacuum cleaner, by the way?’

‘Oh, that was Arthur. No, his machine. He cleans for me now.’

‘What happened to that nice girl? Gill, wasn’t it? She took over after good old Mrs James retired.’

‘Oh, she is having a baby. She only took the job because she wants to be an actress and she thought she would get nearer to me, and when that didn’t happen she decided to have a baby instead.’

‘Oh.’ Coffin hoped the baby would be pleased to be the stand-in for a broom.

‘Arthur and Dave, they have a house-cleaning firm.’

‘Ah.’ Coffin nodded. ‘So Dave was the middle-aged chap in the van outside. I wondered who he was. Why is his face all dirty and dusty?’

‘Hiding behind it,’ said Stella lightly.

‘A handsome chap when you get a look, with those grooves down the side of his nose. Compelling.’

Arthur and Dave had said much the same about their employer as they packed themselves and the brooms into the van marked ‘House Men’.

‘So that’s the Chief Commander,’ Dave had said. ‘Not a bad-looking chap.’

‘Yes, I could fancy him myself.’ Arthur made no secret of his broad band of tastes. ‘But no go – I know others who have tried.’ He’d started the van and they had driven off.

‘Where do they come from?’ demanded Coffin.

‘All checked with your security outfit,’ said Stella. ‘Genuine firm, no bombs. That pair are out-of-work actors, resting anyway, and probably hope I might put a part their way. Arthur has had one or two small parts and Dave’s done some walk-ons.’

‘Where do they live?’ Security was tight round the Chief Commander’s household.

‘Arthur lives in a converted factory across the river in Greenwich with a gang of mates and Dave lives over a café called Stormy Weather.’

Coffin grunted: he knew of the Stormy Weather eating place, which was in a bad part of the town and had a reputation to equal it. It had started out as a simple eating place, then become a hamburger bar and now proclaimed it did the best steaks in town. What Coffin knew was that it smelt of frying fat, cigarette smoke with a hint of something darker but no one had ever caught Jim Billson, the proprietor (he probably didn’t own it, he was reputed to have someone behind him) with any illegal substances. The woman who ran it was, according to Mimsie Marker, the fattest woman in the Second City, and the cook the most drunken. Coffin knew that every so often the Public Health crew, with a drugs man secretly with them, swept in and went over the place, but so far, it had been clean. Cleaner than expected.

‘He hasn’t been with Arthur too long … Arthur started it up with a mate who died.’ She frowned. ‘Cancer … it may have been AIDS-related,’ she added reluctantly. ‘Dave came in after that. They met in the theatre.’

Coffin grunted again.

‘Anyway, it was too much for Gilly. This is a difficult house to clean. All staircase. Like a lighthouse.’

Coffin was hurt. He liked his house. ‘You ought to have been brought up in a basement like I was.’

He was not showing it, since that would not have been tactful, but he was sympathizing with Stella in her workless state. The Stella Pinero Theatre Complex, in the body of the old St Luke’s Church, which she had founded – and which now included a much smaller experimental theatre and a theatre workshop – was leased out to three companies. The main theatre housed a commercial production of Guys and Dolls which was proving very successful and would be occupying the theatre for another two months, through the summer, while the Theatre Workshop was being used by the University of Spinnergate for its Drama Department.

I told her that she ought to keep at least one of the theatres in her own hands, thought Coffin, studying his loved one’s face, but she was pushed on by Letty who always had her eye on the money bags. And I think Letty was having a money crisis herself at the time, although that is not the sort of information Letty tells you. Laetitia Bingham was his own half-sister, banker and investment panjandrum. But panjandrums have their ups and downs and Letty had suffered with the collapse of the eastern Tiger economies. She was over it now, thank goodness, since an impoverished Letty did not bear thinking about. It was time the iron hand of Letty let one of the theatres go free so that Stella could work. It was her world, after all.

He looked with even more sympathy at his wife, before going back to his mother’s papers. What a woman she had been, not one to stay in a scene, held down by children or husbands, always moving on. It was going to be a good book.

He ran his hand through his hair, mentally assessing (although he would never have admitted to this) whether his recent illness had made for a loss of hair. Felt as thick as ever, thank goodness. Nor was he going grey, or not what you could call grey, or not what he called grey; as a child he seemed to recall it had been what people called auburn, now it was dark with a hint of red in certain lights. Secretly he was pleased with his hair, colour and weight. Stella’s hair changed with her mood and the part she was playing: at the moment it was fair, long and loose. Coffin, who knew her age, thought how well she carried it off.

Naturally, he allowed no hint of this to pass over to Stella.

The Second City Force, of which he was Head and Commander, was not in his mind for the moment, that too had had its ups and downs, but for the moment all was tranquil there.

Of course, experience had taught him that you never knew what was going on underneath the surface, and nothing could make the Second City a completely peaceful place. Just as well, or I’d be out of a job. He had been a police officer all his working life, except for a short period in the army, starting at the bottom and climbing up. No further to go, he said to himself, with a smile, unless he wanted to become one of HM’s Inspectors of Constabulary.

Stella smiled back at him, not One of her professional smiles that meant she wasn’t really seeing him at all, but a real smile that said I am glad you are here.

I don’t know all about you, because we never do, you have your secrets and I am not going to dig for them, but I know I love you.

‘Now I have a little time, I might arrange a dinner for us all. Even cook it … No, perhaps not.’ Stella was not interested in cooking and always said that it ruined the hands. An actress could not have bad hands. She would take a table at Max’s and perhaps Coffin’s sister Letty who was so rich and so well, and so often married, would join them. She might put money in a film for her sister-in-law; film makers were always hungry, and rich people, for Letty was rich again, always wanted investments.

She looked across the room to where her husband sat, surrounded by papers and with his laptop on a small table by his side. At last, the long preparation of his mother’s diary and his editing of her letters, more amusing than anyone had expected, was near publication. A young Edinburgh publisher, urged on by Coffin’s half-brother, who was a Writer to the Signet and lived in Old Edinburgh, had offered a contract. The book was ready for the world.

‘George and Robbie are coming in for a meal tonight,’ Stella said, breaking into Coffin’s concentration.

Eventually, he responded. ‘Was that wise?’

“They’re not too bad if you get them in a good mood. I quite like them really.’ And they are powerful figures in my theatrical world. This she did not say aloud but it was understood by her husband who gave a cheerful grin in return.

‘As long as it’s business.’