Ugly Money. Philip Loraine

tugs, coaxing a vast barge upriver towards Longview, remained dramatically sunlit. I never tire of this ever-changing panorama and have to work with my back to it.

      Marisa said to Nick, ‘What do you think?’

      ‘I think you should go for it.’

      Marisa nodded and finished the toast; then, eyes fixed on me over her coffee: ‘For a start you’d better know I laid a false trail. Unless I screwed it up they think I’ve gone south – to New Mexico, Santa Fe.’

      ‘Clever old you.’

      ‘I don’t know. They’re not silly.’ A shrug. ‘If you call her she’ll be on the next plane.’

      ‘Probably.’

      She glanced at her watch and said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ Even the glance at the watch had a meaning, as I was to discover in a minute; it told her that the time was 9.40 and the date the 6th, Tuesday. I went to the phone, found the number in my book and tapped it out. If I knew Ruth she’d be sitting at the other end of the line, anxiously waiting. In fact as soon as I heard a woman’s voice I said, ‘Ruth?’ even as I realized it wasn’t Ruth.

      ‘No, this Luanne. Mrs Adams out, Mr Adams studio.’

      I pressed the mute button and said to Marisa, ‘Luanne. Want to speak to her?’ She shook her head. I told Luanne I’d call again later.

      With some satisfaction, Marisa said, ‘She’s never home 9.40, Tuesday morning. Tennis.’

      OK, game to the little girl, set and match still to be played. I couldn’t see Ruth frisking off to the tennis club in the middle of a crisis, but anyway … I said, ‘When does she get back?’

      ‘Around noon.’

      ‘Then I’m calling her at noon.’

      Looking even more pleased with herself, she said, ‘But right now we get on with your side of the deal.’

      ‘I guess.’ I suppose if one’s going to be conned, it might as well be by a pretty girl.

      My call to Connie Sherwood King in Portland was more productive, she even sounded pleased to hear from me again. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘come on by. Any time before a quarter of one, I have a luncheon.’ ‘Luncheon’ was pretty darned good; I hadn’t heard anyone in Oregon, and few in the United States, use it.

      I said to Nick, ‘Better take both cars.’

      ‘Why?’ asked Marisa.

      ‘Because if your mother decides to fly up here immediately I’m going to have to meet her.’

      She got it in one. ‘And then you’ll want to talk like grown-ups, right?’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘With me out of earshot.’

      ‘Right.’

      She caught Nick’s eye and received some kind of signal which I couldn’t unscramble. He said, ‘Good idea really, and Portland’s only just up the road.’

      I suppose it’s the British side of me which can never think of a ninety-mile drive as ‘just up the road’. Ninety, a hundred and ninety, nine hundred and ninety miles, the Americans in their vast country think nothing of it; their cars are extensions of their bodies. To me, a car is just a pain in what they sometimes call the butt. As soon as we left the house, the dreaded Andy Swensen popped up from behind the privet hedge which separates us from our neighbors. I can never decide whether he looks worse with his few hairs carefully draped over his bald head or with them trailing over his left ear, as now. He was armed with a pair of clippers, but if he’d been using them on the hedge there was no sign of it.

      He gazed after us while we went to the vacant lot next door where the tenants park their cars; it is edged with brambles and old laurels, with even a rose or two left over from the days when a house had stood there. He was eying the two youngsters with lip-smacking curiosity, clearly trying to calculate which of them I’d lured into my bed. Or maybe even a threesome! My single state fascinates him, and his wife is obsessed by it; she’s one of those prurient sacks of fat who are forever reading the Sun and the Examiner, and making inaccurate predictions about other people’s sexual habits. My predecessor had warned me about her.

      I’m sure he was delighted to see me get into my Taurus with Marisa, while Nick sat behind the wheel of her Subaru station wagon alone. He abandoned the pretense of hedging and went to report to the fat lady.

      Marisa was sitting with me because I’d realized we had to get our story together before presenting it to Mrs Sherwood King. I said, ‘You’re not an illegitimate child searching for its father, and you’re not planning to surprise Mom with This is Your Life. So?’

      ‘Surprising Mom isn’t bad, Will. It kind of leaves things open. How about a surprise birthday party? People do it all the time. A surprise party and I want to invite a few of her old buddies from Portland. People she acted with way back when. And maybe her old friend, Mr Hartman, too.’

      I said, ‘Marisa, I don’t think we mention Hartman; we’d only be putting the name into her head. Let’s see if she comes up with one of her own – it could be the answer.’

      ‘I think Hartman’s the answer.’ But all the same she saw the sense of what I’d said, and added, ‘OK, we’ll just hang the party on her, and see what gives.’