The Pleasure Quartet by Vina Jackson Page B

of irony. ‘So, what’s your poison?’
    He was drinking Guinness. I asked for the same, but in a half-pint glass to his larger one.
    We found a seat in a corner of the darkened bar and made ourselves comfortable.
    I was bursting with questions and the first hour we spent together rushed by as we compared stories about our parents, families, and connected all the necessary dots. Apart from actually
learning their names and personal idiosyncrasies, there were no major revelations, but I found it warming to learn of his side of my family and get an idea of what my parents had left behind when
they decided to emigrate.
    We were already well into our second round of drinks, and the bar was almost empty with just a handful of pinstriped City types lingering in the gloom, when the conversation turned to me and my
growing up in New Zealand. I tried to make a dull subject interesting. By the time I reached the point in my story when my mother died and I had kindly been taken in by Iris’s parents, I
found it difficult not to reveal the fact of my almost puppy-like attraction to Iris. Whether Gwillam could read between my halting lines and guess the feral nature of my feelings was hard to say,
but he refrained from bombarding me with questions in response to my awkward reticence when it came to Iris.
    A mad, stray thought rushed across my overworked brain when Gwillam left me on my own for a few minutes to visit the toilet, that he was just perfect; if Iris truly needed a man in addition to
me, he would make an ideal candidate that I could more than tolerate.
    I would quickly learn how absurd that concept was.
    ‘So what prompted you two to come to England?’ he asked when he returned.
    I explained Joan’s bequest and described some of her stories to him. Although I held back on the episode of the Ball. It was a shared memory that belonged to just Iris and me, and I
didn’t feel comfortable revealing all its details, even to Gwillam, apart from the fact that so much of it would sound absurd to an outsider.
    ‘She sounds like she was the life and soul of the party, Grandma Joan.’ Gwillam smiled. ‘A life well lived,’ he added.
    ‘She was lovely,’ I said.
    ‘I’m curious, though, about what she wrote about ghosts and all that. Bit of a strange message, don’t you think?’
    Iris and I had initially been surprised by her note, but after finding out that she had left us the means to leave New Zealand and travel to London, we had been overly ebullient and had somehow
brushed the subject aside in our enthusiasm to arrange the journey as soon as we could manage.
    ‘I suppose so.’
    ‘What could she have meant? Was she a believer in the supernatural?’
    ‘I haven’t a clue. Iris neither. Though I doubt it. She scoffed at religion, I know, so I can’t imagine her putting much faith in ghost stories.’
    Gwillam had explained earlier in our rambling conversation that as part of his training for the Bar he had become something of a specialist in hunting down lost heirs and estate beneficiaries.
It was like detective work, he said, and he was already an avid fan of crime and mystery books anyway, so it felt like combining his job with his hobby. I’d even found out that he had seen
our Jack the Ripper play at the theatre, although it had been a week before I had begun my work as an usherette there so our paths hadn’t crossed.
    ‘Maybe I could look into it?’ he suggested. ‘Find out more about her life here and why she jumped ship?’
    ‘Would you? Could you?’
    ‘I feel I’m obligated to do so now. You know, I’m like a dog with a bone once something catches my attention!’ He chuckled. ‘Here you are, a hitherto unknown cousin
from the other side of the world, bringing your own mystery along with you. How could I resist?’
    He took out a small notebook and wrote down the details I could recall about Joan and her time in London, and the stories she had regaled us with, and quizzed me about what I