by Neil Hegarty
Maeve was very white. And when Roisin touched her, she was very cold.
Roisin was above the scene now, suddenly. She had risen above the ground, the grotto, the gleaming rock, above the body of her sister sitting there in a pool of shadow, amid a flowing of dark blood. She was looking down from a height, from a place of safety. She split herself from the scene, from the sensations she was now able to observe as from afar – the last light of evening, the glistening sheen of the rock, the thin breath of wind sighing through the enveloping trees. She floated, and watched, and that was enough.
Nobody could sustain the loss of such a lot of blood, they said later, and besides, though Maeve was tall for her age, she was skinny too: she was, as Philomena used to say, ‘only a rickle’. When the ambulance came – for the other Roisin, there on the ground, did all the right things, she didn’t waste a second, she didn’t fuss around after realising that there was nothing she could do, that a doctor needed to be here – when the ambulance came and Maeve was moved, and slid into the vehicle: when all these things happened, there was still a moment to spare. Roisin stood, and looked at the ambulance, at the two ambulance workers, at the young, stammering priest, summoned in haste from the sacristy and standing there now on the crazy pathing, slipping his little round case of oil back into his pocket, looking still and shocked. At the grotto now slipping into darkness, at the wire, and the deeper darkness lying pooled there on the ground. ‘Come with us now, love,’ said one of the ambulance people, a woman. ‘Come,’ and held out a hand, and Roisin, moving stiffly, clambered into the ambulance to join the cold body of her sister.
She was driven off. She left herself behind.
13
They moved in the darkness, together, and now Martin sighed in his sleep and rolled away. Nothing woke him, or so Ward used to think – not a traffic helicopter overhead, not a car alarm right outside the house. Not bottles being slung into the bottle bank at the end of the road – slung and smashed at two, three, four in the morning, by God knows what selfish, antisocial shit. Just some of the infinite varieties of noises emitted by London at night, so many of them terrifying, if one was of a mind to be terrified.
Ward lay awake and looked into darkness.
The worst of this array of noises: the animal sounds made a few months ago by that young guy, screaming as he was stabbed, not ten yards from their own front door – though granted, this was highly exceptional.
And granted too: Martin had woken for that one.
Though not for their very own house alarm, which in the first weeks after they moved into this house – ‘taking up residence,’ as Martin put it, ‘I’m Queenie arriving at Windsor for her Easter hols’ – had worked not quite as it ought to have done, shrilling at three o’clock, four o’clock in the morning, three, four nights in a row, shredding Ward’s nerves.
Shrilling and screaming, alarms and aircraft and stabbings and car horns. Enough to bring the dead to life. But Martin would sleep on and on, more dead than the dead.
‘When I die,’ he had said the other week, ‘I want to be buried in wicker, a wicker coffin. I want you to arrange that for me,’ he’d said, stirring his coffee meditatively. ‘Will you promise?’
‘They wouldn’t allow wicker at Westminster Abbey,’ Ward told him. ‘You do want your send-off to be at the Abbey, don’t you?’ This, a glance at Martin’s preoccupation with the royals, which was something Ward could not begin to understand, much less approve of.
Safe ground, or so Ward thought. Martin had spoken lightly, airily; and it was, besides, impossible to make a drama out of wicker. So: ‘You won’t need wicker,’ Ward continued, ‘I’ll just roll you in the duvet and stick you in the boot of the car like that, and deliver you to the undertaker myself.’
‘The still-warm duvet. Efficient,’ Martin said, pursing his lips, taking a sip of coffee. But now the cleft on his forehead appeared, like a line run in black ink. ‘Before rigor mortis has set in. Always so efficient. And you’re right, of course: wicker might be better than nasty old polished wood, but a duvet’s better than wicker. No extra expense, for one thing.’ Another sip and a frown. The cleft remained – but it seemed that the jocular just about worked, this morning.
Or perhaps not. The cleft deepened, and Ward felt the temperature plunge, and braced for the chill. Nothing new about any of this.
‘You know,’ Martin said after a few minutes, ‘it would be nice to think that you would actually pay attention to my wishes.’
‘I was joking,’ Ward said, ‘it was a joke,’ and Martin shrugged slightly. ‘It might be better,’ Ward pursued, ‘not to talk about coffins over breakfast.’
A silence, after that. Martin excelled at silences.
Later – three days later – in the throes of a clear-out of bathroom cabinets, Ward heard a rattle, stirred the stew of Disprin boxes, tubes of hotel moisturiser, fished out a small brown bottle of pills. Sleeping pills, which explained the sleep of the dead. ‘I didn’t know you took sleeping pills,’ Ward said, later.
A shrug, again. ‘From time to time. Nothing to worry about.’ Three days, and this wicker-sparked coldness still endured.
Three days, in fact, was nothing.
‘What do you need sleeping pills for?’ – and a stiff, reluctant few words. Just from time to time; it was nothing, Martin intimated, to worry about. It was none of Ward’s business.
And, Ward liked to reflect, there was nothing to worry about. Martin’s mood changed as the weather changed. A few days later, and all would be well.
There were no pills tonight: Ward was almost sure of it. And true enough: when the phone a few minutes later emitted a tiny beep and buzz; when at the bottom of the bed, Felicity arched her back and sat up for a moment before settling back again into the nest she had made in the duvet – when these things happened, Martin’s breathing changed: he sighed in the darkness, cleared his throat. Ward watched in the dimness as Felicity’s large, dark eyes turned to gaze at Martin. She blinked, purred for a moment, then stopped and slept. Outside, in the darkness, London too inhaled and exhaled.
Ward reached for the phone before its light died away. A text message, from work. A theft. A Sandborne. And an assault, Charlotte wrote. Ireland. Request you call the office at your convenience.
Mrs Sandborne.
Ward looked at the screen for a moment, then turned the phone off, set it down gently. Martin was very obviously now awake, but it would not do to behave in too ostentatiously wakeful a manner oneself. And it was only five o’clock: murders and Charlotte would have to wait, for two more hours at least. Ward burrowed into Martin’s warm, smooth back, felt Felicity sink her considerable cat weight, heard her tiny cat snore, felt Martin relax, a little, slept.
When the alarm went off, after two more dark, silent hours – the two of them spooning, moving, sleeping soundly – it was Martin’s turn to reach out and silence it. He had an old-fashioned alarm clock on his side of the bed – a Disney model, with Pluto’s arms doubling as the clock hands, a long-ago gift from his little sister and now deployed ironically. Certainly it stood out when set against Martin’s capsule wardrobe, with its blacks and charcoals, anthracites and sharp whites, and the collection of thin, slippery socks (unpleasant socks, Ward thought privately) that Martin favoured. A forbidding wardrobe. But the clock was manufactured specifically to be bashed satisfyingly into silence – and now Martin reached, and bashed, and they lay together for another moment, naked in the darkness.
This moment tended to establish the temperature for the rest of the day. A good day? The very foulest of days, with a wind ripping down from the north-east? Martin – Ward imagined this was the way it worked, though really, who knew? – took his own temperature, and then assigned this temperature to the world. So: frigid, or balmy, Siberian or subtropical: it all flowed from this moment.
‘Who sent the text, the nocturnal text?’ And then, before Ward could reply, ‘I wish, I really do wish you would turn your phone to silent. It’s almo
st as if you do it to piss me off.’
Piss me off. So, a frigid day.
‘I meant to,’ Ward said, ‘but I forgot.’
At the foot of the bed, Felicity sat up again.
‘And so my sleeping patterns are messed up. Well, nice.’
‘It was Charlotte. A theft in Ireland, I assume Dublin,’ Ward repeated, with a renewed sense of dismay. ‘Some sort of assault, too, she says.’
‘Really,’ Martin said. ‘Novel.’
‘I assume Dublin,’ he repeated, underscoring his own sense of dismay. ‘Most likely I’ll have to go over there.’ Back there.
Ward was aware of speaking just a little too fast. This was a mistake, a detectable floundering, amid the undulating white cotton-and-goose-down foothills of the duvet. Martin detested nerves.
‘Weren’t we going to Southwold for the weekend?’ He spoke softly, with the apparent gentleness that in other contexts cast such a spell over Ward’s friends. A voice echoed in the memory: He has lovely manners, doesn’t he? – exclaimed a clearly dazzled one of them, months ago now. I didn’t think people had manners like that, not these days. You really did land on your feet.
Strange, how manners can have the edge of a sharp blade.
‘Southwold,’ Martin said again. ‘Haven’t we been looking forward to it for weeks?’ The soft voice continued amid the foothills. ‘Sea air, fish and chips, a paddle in the water, even: didn’t we say that it would set us up? I seem to remember’ – and here Martin’s voice rose a notch towards falsetto, the beginnings of a mocking lisp – ‘“Thouthwold. I love the thmell of thalt in the air, don’t you?” But perhaps I was the only one looking forward?’
Ward flushed in the darkness.
‘I’ll check with Charlotte, of course…’
‘You did book the time off, didn’t you? I mean, you did actually book it?’
‘Of course I booked it. What I mean is, sometimes these things happen. I get a sense from Charlotte’s text that they’ll need me, that I’ll just have to suck it up.’ And now a rally, a call to moral order. ‘And it’s a big theft.’
All at once, Martin threw the duvet off. ‘Something and someone unknown to me. Big deal. And, what, suck it up? It seems that I’m the one who has to suck it up. I’m the one being messed about here. Which always seems to be the case, with you.’ He vanished into the bathroom. ‘Oh, but I forgot. What is it? – oh yes, a violation, common pat-rimony,’ he said. ‘The empty frames,’ he said, and closed the door.
There was a meeting at the clinic, early – too early, in Martin’s opinion. This was, Ward realised now, never going to have been a good morning: this early meeting had been a point of bitterness for several days. No meetings until after noon: that should be the rule, Martin said, to allow the partners to come within touching distance of their humanity. ‘And make the right decisions, as opposed to the wrong decisions.’ Ten o’clock in the morning was, he said, stupid. ‘Stupid, stupid,’ he had said. ‘Everyone and everyone: why is everyone so stupid?’
On other mornings, better mornings, they would lie together for a few minutes after the alarm sounded, there in the darkness and the warmth; and at such times it was easier to imagine that all was well, that the world was in a state of equilibrium. ‘Not yet, not yet,’ Ward would say, and cling to the warmth, ‘two more minutes’ – and then Martin would be gone. ‘I have made the transition,’ he would say over his shoulder, ‘I have crossed the Styx. You go and make me some coffee.’ He would throw himself in the shower, into the day. I have made the transition, I have crossed the Styx: his good-morning catchphrase. That was the way of him, on good mornings.
No catchphrases on this bad morning.
Ward lay for another moment – then up, downstairs, putting on the coffee, Felicity padding silently behind.
The kitchen looked south, over the little back garden, over a fragment of skyline. Rooftops and chimneys of the street below their street on this steep London hill, and a glimpse of the Shard, bright today, and acute against a slice of blue: a new Chartres Cathedral, some critic had said; though, what would the Qatari owners make of this parallel? Ward moved automatically through the morning routine: coffee ground and set up and flame ignited, raisin bagels slid into the toaster, butter and honey. And a bowl of oranges too.
The raisins burned easily; you had to watch them.
The thought hovered: what would Daddy have said, about the raisin bagels, coffee like this coffee, the spare Heal’s table and chairs, all blond ash wood and not very comfortable to sit on? And Felicity there on her chair?
Daddy had liked to drown any kittens that crossed his path.
And the early sunshine pouring sideways – like butterscotch – into the kitchen? Their whole set-up here in this house?
‘You wouldn’t prefer cane furniture, would you?’ Martin had asked, as they shopped in Heal’s that day. ‘They have some nice stuff in cane, nowadays. You like cane.’ He glanced. ‘Only joking,’ he said, ‘just my little joke,’ and he pointed with a gloved hand. ‘Look, there’s what we want, over there.’
Daddy often hovered. Often stepped into the frame, though long dead: what would Daddy have made of this, or of that? The bagel, the coffee grinder. Daddy, Daddy, you bastard.
Daddy had crossed the Styx long ago. But he was like Martin, he seemed to have no problem crossing back again, and again. Some people must have special passes.
A plane slid across the slice of blue, and after a moment Ward heard the groaning note of its engines. The city stepped up a gear: a refuse truck passed along Despard Road, to empty the green bin left tidily out by Ward the previous night (watched by a sleek fox, its bushy tail a testament to good living); the high note of children’s voices, walking along early to school. Upstairs, Martin was out of the shower: a board creaked, a door slid open and closed as he clothed himself from his capsule wardrobe for the land of the living.
A silence that overlaid all this bustle, that he seemed to push, again, down the steep stairs and into the kitchen.
In Ireland, a theft and an assault. In London, Charlotte to be contacted. In the kitchen, early sun like butterscotch, the toaster radiating heat and a note of burning, and popping. No Southwold, very likely, no salty air, no fish and chips: his instincts were clear. And a reckoning to come: but for a few more minutes, it was possible to hold the world at bay.
There was a new Julia on the scene at the clinic: this, as though to add to the offence, to the list of grievances. That was what Martin called them: the administrators, all of them, in the pecking order in the clinic. The Julias. They held the real power, they could muck it up for anyone if they felt like it; this was, Martin said, the first lesson to learn about administrative staff. They kept the diaries, they knew about the finances, they burrowed like ticks into the stuff of the clinic to find out the secrets. There had been an actual Julia once, a couple of years ago: long blonde hair, as Martin described her; a fondness for black coats, on the shoulders of which motes of dandruff lay strewn – ‘an Alpine scene,’ Martin had said at the time, ‘snowy, a Narnian scene.’ An identikit Sloaney type, really, he said, and in Martin’s opinion not very good at her job.
Now all such, men and women alike, were referred to as the Julias.
And this new Julia was worse than any of these predecessors. This Julia had arranged the ten o’clock meeting. To discuss the clinic’s financial situation, to discuss relationships with private health providers, who were cutting back on the counselling slots they were prepared to finance.
This Julia was a man.
Now Ward heard Martin’s light step on the stairs, and he appeared, in anthracite today, his long dark hair (a unique selling point, the hair, or so Ward understood; if you were a counsellor of a certain stripe, it seemed more important to look the part than to be good at your job) still damp, still smelling of his orange-scented shampoo. Sometimes he sloughed off his mood on the stairs – had he, today? ‘Julia awaits,’ he said, and rapidly he polished off his bagel, dr
ank his coffee. What would he say about Ireland, about the rapidly vanishing Southwold?
‘Perhaps it’s a good thing. I mean, we could each of us use some space,’ he said, almost in passing, almost over his shoulder, almost as though he did not now very much care about Southwold, about the weekend, as though the scene upstairs, amid the billowing bedding, had never taken place at all. ‘I can catch up with a few things, I suppose.’
‘What things?’ Ward asked. Without taking a moment, a second to frame a response.
Martin pushed forward his smoothly shaved chin, he pushed his orange-perfumed hair back. ‘Me things,’ he said. ‘I might go down to Kent,’ he said. ‘To Nigel. You can crowd me, you know,’ he said. He had begun, lately, to deploy this phrase. ‘Keep me posted, if you can be bothered, I mean,’ and now he was gone without another word, and the front door banged, the panes of yellow and green stained glass juddering in their frames.
How long might Ward be in Ireland? – Martin hadn’t asked.
Ward imagined Martin’s movements for the next few minutes: his long legs making short work of Despard Road, quickly down the hill; cross at the lights, down the steps and into the bowels of the tube, to be whisked to Bloomsbury, and to the exacting, tick-like Julia. An easy commute, by London standards: as easy as pie.
Ward had met the original Julia, and had liked her. Warm, a touch of vivacity, anxiety to do well. With dandruff, yes, but she couldn’t help that. She presumably used anti-dandruff shampoo, did her best. ‘I thought she was nice,’ Ward had said, mistakenly.
Martin replied, quite lightly, ‘Perhaps you’re not much of a judge of character?’
Julia had left London, in the end, for a job in Bristol.
The new Julia was a different kettle of fish. He didn’t take prisoners, this Julia – so Ward had deduced. He was a results man. He couldn’t be analysed in passing, and pulverised. He liked numbers, targets and order.