Transgressions

by Sarah Dunant

  “Changing sides?”

  “Yes. He was going to invite Tom instead.”

  “He didn’t, did he?” she said, altogether too anxiously.

  “No, of course not. Don’t worry. I told him it was verboten. By the way, talking of which, have you got that key back yet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. And how about the business with Van Morrison?”

  “Oh . . . er . . . I found them again.”

  “Where?”

  “In the house.”

  “There, I told you. Too nasty even for our Tom. Still, you are in his thoughts, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Tom’s thoughts.”

  “How do you know?”

  She looked sheepish. “Because Patrick had lunch with him a couple of days ago. Don’t worry. I promise, no secrets. Since when did I tell Patrick anything anyway? But he said Tom was a bit down.”

  “Why?”

  “He’d been for some interview or other. In Canada? Was sure he hadn’t got the job. Politics, I gather.”

  “Yes. It usually is.”

  “So. Poor Tom, eh? Patrick said he misses you.”

  “Did Tom say that?”

  “Lord, no. That was Patrick’s take on it. He said he seemed in a bit of a state. He got quite drunk apparently, and a bit bitter about things.”

  “Things?”

  “Yes, well, you know. You and him. Life, all the old Tom-type stuff. Patrick felt sorry for him really. That’s why he wanted to invite him.”

  “Well, thank God he didn’t.”

  “Indeed. Sad, though, eh?” She paused. And then when she realized she wasn’t going to get anything more: “How does it make you feel?”

  Sally, up and running, gathering gossip for the local newsletter. “Actually, Sal, to be honest I couldn’t give a toss. And I do have to go.”

  “How about the cab?”

  “I’ll get one off the street. I’m sure someone else will take mine.”

  “Okay. Well, just don’t go underground again, right? I know you’ll probably take offense if I say it, but you’re not looking all that great. I bet this is the first time you’ve been out for weeks. Am I right?”

  Elizabeth put up her hands in mock submission.

  Sally shook her head. “See? I do wish you’d let me run your life for a bit. I know I could get you back into the swing of things.”

  The swing of things. It didn’t sound like the kind of place one wanted to be, even with Sally holding one’s hand. Definitely time to go.

  Outside the sudden fresh air sharpened her up, the night temperatures rapidly plunging their way toward zero. She was absurdly glad to be out of the house and on the street. She walked the fifty yards or so to the main road and stood waiting for a cab. After a few minutes, a car with three guys stopped at the traffic lights, the one in the back rolling down a window. “Hey, darling? Need a lift?”

  “No, thanks,” she said, her voice instantly a middle-class parody. “I’m waiting for someone.”

  “Yeah, me,” he said, laughing, starting to open his door. She felt herself go tense, checking for other people on the street. Across the road a couple was walking, almost out of earshot, but at that moment the lights changed and the driver slammed into second gear, taking off at an unholy speed, leaving the passenger clinging to the door for dear life. She heard their wild laughter echoing down the road.

  When a cab finally came, she gave her address and sat back against the seat, exhausted. Too much social life after too little. She wasn’t up for it. Give me written words any day, she thought. Nobody answers you back.

  Her address was at the end of a maze of one-way streets, so she had to direct the driver for the last couple of blocks. As they turned the corner onto her road she saw a blue Mustang pull out from the curb and head off in the other direction. Bad electrical system, she thought, remembering the trouble that she and Tom had had with theirs. The Golf may have less prestige, but it also has more reliability.

  She paid the driver and made her way, somewhat unsteadily, to the door, where she fumbled with the lock. The cabbie stayed where he was, engine running. It took longer with him watching but she was grateful for the surveillance. When she finally succeeded in opening it she threw him a wave.

  “All right then, love?”

  “Fine, thanks. Good night.” Sweet, she thought.

  Inside, the house loomed up above her, dark and silent. Have you missed me? she wondered.

  She flung off her coat and dropped it on the floor, pleased to be home but a little unnerved by the quiet. Both her head and her stomach were demanding attention. Sleep. That’s what she needed. But water first. Lots of it.

  She moved along the corridor toward the kitchen stairs and it was then that she heard it, seeping out from under the door: the sound of a voice as mellow as any instrument with an audience behind, showing their appreciation. Van Morrison singing his heart out in San Francisco, and her kitchen. Oh, great, she thought for a second in her blurred state, I love that track. Then reality registered like a sharp kick to the stomach.

  She stood stiffly by the door, her hand on the handle. There was light from underneath, but, then, she usually left one on, just for security’s sake. Just as she also locked the door. She turned the key in the lock quietly and pushed. Nothing happened. She pushed again. No. The door was locked now. Surely she hadn’t left it unlocked when she went out? But, then, she’d been late and in a rush. She turned the key back again. She realized that she couldn’t remember. She took a few deep breaths, opened the door, and went in.

  The room beyond was bright and empty, just as she’d left it. Nobody there. Nobody at all. She walked slowly across the floor to the shelf where the little green lights on the stereo system were dancing in tune to the range of Morrison’s voice. But she had turned the system off. That much she remembered with absolute clarity. She could see herself doing it again in memory, her finger hitting the switch, watching the light go out.

  As she reached the machine, the track ended, leaving a sudden huge silence. Then the little illuminated number jumped from one to two and a fiddle came in, long and pure. On the console the digital clock that registered the length of each track jumped from four minutes twenty-seven back to zero, then started moving steadily through the seconds again. Four minutes twenty-seven—the first track.

  She thought about what it meant: that four minutes and twenty-seven seconds ago someone must have been standing there pressing the start button. No. It wasn’t possible. But even as she thought it she knew it was. She found it suddenly hard to swallow, hard to sort out the music from the pounding between her ears. Four minutes twenty-seven seconds. Which meant that whoever had done it had to be nearby. Could even still be in the house.

  The shock of the thought sluiced adrenaline through her so fast that it wiped out the fuzz of the booze, leaving her sharply, completely alert.

  She moved to the French doors and tested the handle. The lock was firmly in place. She tried the window. Same thing. No one had come in that way. She thought about the downstairs bathroom. That little porthole window that she’d never got around to having bars put on. She went out quickly, while she still had the courage, but the room was empty, the window intact, lock on, no sign of disturbance. You’d need to be a midget to get through there anyway. Four minutes twenty-seven seconds. She wound back the thread of her life. She would have been in the cab, coming to the one-way street, turning onto the street with the blue Mustang taking off in the other direction. The Mustang. It must have been parked opposite the house. Of course. The Mustang. Why hadn’t she realized it before? Parked, waiting, the clock on the dashboard, no doubt, keeping track of how long the album had been playing.

  It was so simple. If it wasn’t for the car she would never have suspected him. After all, he’d brought the key back only that very day. The key? But it was an Ingersoll. You couldn’t copy an Ingersoll, could you? Wasn’t that what the security people said? She alre
ady knew the answer. Tom could do it. Tom could do anything when he set his mind to it.

  So how did he know that she wouldn’t be there? That tonight of all nights she’d be out? Easy. He had knocked earlier and there had been no response. But if he’d been waiting, wouldn’t she have seen the car on the street? It hadn’t been there when she went out looking for him, had it? She would have noticed it.

  No, better than that. He didn’t have to stay because he knew she’d be out later. He knew about the birthday party. Patrick had told him when they’d had lunch together. Of course. He knew that it was she and not he who’d been invited.

  So he went away, waited awhile, then what? Drove here, came in, switched on the machine, and sat outside waiting, just slipping in to start it again every fifty minutes until . . .

  But why would he possibly want to do such a thing? It was so cruel it was almost surreal. He must have known how much it would freak her out. How much could you hate someone for ending something that was already ended, something that you yourself had helped to destroy? Then she remembered something. An incident from a holiday they had taken during the first winter they were together: stupid but telling.

  They’d gone to Corfu, too early for the tourists and too cold for the beach, and to keep themselves amused they had visited a set of caves in the north of the island. They and a German couple had had the guide to themselves, but the commentary had been so lousy that they contrived to lose him halfway through, negotiating their own route through the primeval landscape and dense silence.

  They had been underground for about half an hour, wandering through the deepest part of the caves where the surface was pitted by potholes and underground lakes, when suddenly the lights had gone off. The blackness had been instant, total, like death. He’d been right beside her when it happened but as she reached out to touch him he was gone. She’d found it funny at first, whispering to him in the black, until she had heard the most dreadful screech somewhere to her right, as if someone had stumbled and fallen into one of the chasms. She had been groping her way blindly toward the sound, screaming his name, when an icy hand had slid around her neck. The fear had lifted her an inch off the ground.

  “Oh, come on, Lizzie. It was just a joke,” he had said later as he held her to his chest, trying to stem her hiccupping sobs. “Anyway, at least now I know how much you’d miss me.” The remark had turned her tears into fury. The row that followed had gone on for days, until eventually the early spring sun and his little-boy contriteness had forced her into forgiving him. But not forgetting.

  She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and gulped down half of it. On the console, Van was now into track five. She gave it another two minutes then picked up the portable phone.

  The number rang six times, then connected.

  “Hello?”

  She slid the receiver away from her ear and held it up to the speakers as she flicked up the volume. For a man who didn’t like Van Morrison it would have been a painful experience. Not painful enough. She pulled it down again. “Hello, Tom,” she said steadily.

  “Lizzie? Is that you? God, you took the top of my head off. I . . . er . . . was that the album?” He sounded distinctly shaky.

  “Yeah. Van the Man. Your choice.”

  He gave a little laugh. “Well, you know what I think of him. But the guy at the record store in Vancouver thought it was a good one. A collector’s item, he said. I rang the doorbell but you weren’t in.”

  “Oh, and which time was that?”

  “What?”

  “The first visit or the second?”

  “Uh . . . I don’t know. I dropped it by after work. It must have been—”

  “Don’t lie to me, Tom.” And the explosion of her voice took even her by surprise. “Just don’t do it, okay? You creep. What do you think it feels like, being so scared that your gut seizes up? What is it with you that you can’t leave it alone? You wanted out, too, you know. It was mutual, remember. Or was that just more of your bullshit?”

  “Hey, hey, what is this?” he said, his anger rising up to meet hers. “I bring you back your key. As a way of apologizing I buy you an album, and now you blow my head off. You know, I think—”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you think. I want you to stop it, right now, do you hear? I want you to stop it, or . . . or I’ll call the police.” And she heard the crack in her voice.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, quietly now, more carefully. “Stop what exactly? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you coming ’round here tonight and putting on the stereo, so that I’d come in to find it still playing. This is my house and nobody, nobody is going to make me feel scared about living in it. D’you hear me?”

  “But—”

  “And don’t bother to deny it. I know it was you, okay? I saw you. I saw your car. It was outside the house.”

  “What car?”

  “The bloody Mustang.”

  At the other end of the line there was a slight pause. Someone or something made a noise in the background. He said something in reply then came back to the phone. “Listen to me, Lizzie, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t have the Mustang anymore. I sold it two months ago to a guy in Stoke Newington. I can give you his phone number if you don’t believe me. I drive a red Ford Capri now and I’ve been in all evening.”

  “Yeah, and I’m sure you can prove it.”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I can.”

  And there was now something in his voice that made her pause. He sighed. The voice in the background muttered something else. He put his hand over the receiver. Then he came back on the line. “Sorry. You still there?”

  “Yes,” she said, and her voice sounded suddenly very small to her.

  “Listen, I haven’t been there, all right? But maybe you should tell me what’s happened.”

  “It wasn’t you,” she said flatly. “You didn’t take a duplicate of the key and come back here while I was out.”

  “No. Why would I do a thing like that? Christ, Lizzie, what do you take me for?”

  A bitter lover, she thought, but even as she did so, she knew with utter certainty that he was telling the truth. So the car outside had had nothing to do with it. In which case who—? Four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. And where—? She had been standing with her back to the open kitchen door. Now she turned. Out of the door the house rose up three floors into the night. Three floors and a lot of places to hide.

  “Are you saying you think somebody has been there? Has broken in?”

  “I . . . er . . . I don’t know. I came back to find the stereo on. It had been playing for four and a half minutes.”

  “So, maybe you left it on repeat?”

  “No.” She almost shouted into the receiver. “No, there’s no repeat button. And I turned it off. I know that.”

  “Well, there must be some explanation. Maybe Millie hit the switch by mistake.”

  Millie? Yes? No, surely it wasn’t possible. She looked around. If the cat had done this, then she’d still be in the room, wouldn’t she? “I’m sorry, I . . . er . . .”

  He sighed. “It’s all right. Really. Look, I know you think I’m a shit, and I know those early notes I sent were probably out of line. But it doesn’t make me the enemy. Not anymore. So if you’re in trouble—” And just for that second she didn’t know what to say. His concern suddenly made her want to cry. But then she was scared, not at all herself. “I mean you’re sure about the switch, about turning it off? I don’t want to risk your wrath, but you sound a little drunk.”

  “I was, but I’m not now. And, yes. I’m sure. I’m sure, Tom. I turned it off.”

  There was a pause. “You still scared?”

  “No,” she said, but it was obvious to both of them she was lying.

  “Do you want me to come over?”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  “Well, you sure as hell don’t sound fine. Have you checked the rest
of the house, just in case?”

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “Then how about if I stay on the line while you do that?”

  Yes, she thought. Oh, yes, please. What is it they say about the devil you know? “What about . . . I mean, what about your guest?”

  “It’s all right. It’s a friend. They can wait.” And despite herself a little something nipped inside the gut, something that wasn’t fear. “Okay. So why don’t we start with the cellar? Get the worst over first.”

  And so together they made a slow pilgrimage through the house. In every room she checked the windows, beneath the beds, behind the doors, even—though she didn’t tell him—inside the wardrobes. There was no one there. Not even Millie. The only thing she found that could cause any worry was in the top little bedroom, where the catch was off the window. But it was so far up from the ground that you would have needed a decorator’s ladder to get in that way. She locked it now, screwing it down so tightly that it hurt her fingers.

  He stayed close in her ear, not intrusive, but always there. The tour and his presence quieted her. When they got to the attic, he said, “And how about through the little door? Into that big storage cupboard?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Might as well be thorough.” And she knew he was laughing at her, just a little. But it didn’t really bother her. She opened the door and put on the light. A jumble of black bags and boxes met her gaze, the detritus of a lifetime. And a relationship.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Except seven years of Classical Music and the London Review of Books. I thought you said you’d cleared everything out.”

  “See. Now you know why I broke in.” And this time they both found it funny. “I’ll come ’round and pick them up sometime. But you’ll have to agree to let me in, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, and found herself smiling as she did so.

  By the time they arrived back down in the kitchen all the fear and panic had gone, washed away. Somehow she had known they wouldn’t find anything. In fact, even as she’d been looking, heart thumping with each light going on, the house itself still hadn’t frightened her. Not really. Strange.