by Graham Swift
But she looks at me closely, only a slight crease of a smile. As if I’m under interrogation. Another game. I’m the one under suspicion, even the guilty party. Sarah’s had me in for questioning, a grilling. At her bare table. I’m the one who still lives in the world, where people go wrong. How can you go wrong in prison?
“And what does she think?”
“What does Rita think? About—?”
“About.”
“I think Rita thinks I’m mad.”
She looks down again at her hands. She often looks at her hands as if surprised they’re still hers.
“And are you?”
“I’m not mad, sweetheart. You know that. I said she should have the day off. Since it’s—a special day. Since I wouldn’t be around much myself. But—Rita, take a day off? She’s there now, working twice as hard.”
“As if you’re skiving.”
“As if I’m skiving. Not mad, just skiving.”
The crease of a smile broadens. Her bare table. There are times on these visits when we forget which way round it is. Am I visiting her? Is she visiting me?
Another game we play: the big continuous game. It’s not you who’s locked in, sweetheart, it’s me who’s locked out.
“She’s a loyal woman, George. You’re lucky to have her.”
“I am.”
Though I could tell her, I could tell her even now: I think Rita’s going to quit. That would end our game, our little jealousy game—it would mean Sarah would win. Rita’s going to leave me, I’ve read the signs.
(Rita’s read them too.)
But I know this isn’t the time to tell her. They wouldn’t be the words she’d want to hear. Rita’s had enough, she’s giving up, she’s going to quit.
“Yes,” I say. I look her straight in the eye. “I’m a lucky man.”
It’s strange how in this place where there can’t be any privacy you can learn to say so much. As if there’s a code, a second language under the one you speak.
Strange, how here you can confess.
But I haven’t told Sarah everything. Does anyone tell anyone everything? There are things I can’t and won’t tell Sarah yet. Perhaps I never will.
48
He started the car, drove out of the car park. I followed him home.
Home? Where was that for Bob Nash, that night?
We threaded the tangle of roads inside the airport—where you might circle around for ever—then took the tunnel out under the runway.
Can you tell from the way a car is driven what the driver is thinking? Can you read a car like a face? Maybe not. He didn’t speed—the opposite. The slow lane again. I should have thought: this is good, he knows he has to take care—given the state he’s in. He’s making sure he makes it safely.
When we came off the motorway onto the slower elevated section, I dared to drive right on his tail.
Did I want him to know I was there—urging him, escorting him?
If he hadn’t been thinking of other things, his head might have jerked to his mirror. Who’s this joker behind me who can’t keep his distance?
A Monday evening. The traffic, in this direction, quiet by now. He might have been back in Beecham Close in half an hour. But at the exit for the North Circular—the first option for Wimbledon, via Kew Bridge—he carried straight on, and when he took the Hammersmith exit he didn’t take the second option—via Hammersmith Bridge—but continued round the Hammersmith roundabout and took the Fulham turn.
Still an option—via Putney—for Wimbledon. But he wasn’t thinking beyond Fulham (I’d guessed it by now). He was retracing his route of two hours before, as if to turn time around.
I’ve never told Sarah this: that he went to Fulham first, on the way back. It wasn’t that he was caught in traffic, that he took it slowly, had to stop, even, to collect himself. He went back to the flat.
And I’ve never told Sarah what happened before that—right there, on Fulham Palace Road, just a little way down from the Hammersmith turn.
There was a set of lights that had just switched to red: nothing between him and them except fifty yards or more of road. But he didn’t slow down. For the first time that night he suddenly accelerated. For the first time that night he drove like a madman.
It’s not a busy intersection, a minor road to left and right, but a long, high-sided truck had already started to lumber its way across. He speeded up—I’d swear it—when he saw the possibility. When he saw the side of the truck about to straddle the road like a wall.
A mistake? He hadn’t seen the lights, his mind just wasn’t on the road? No. I’m a trained observer—observation’s my job. He speeded up, he went for it.
And only slammed on his brakes at the point where if his tyres hadn’t been good, if the road had been wet, it still might have turned out bad.
Fulham Palace Road. Junction with St. Dunstan’s and Winslow.
A cop again, composing an accident report, even before it had happened. The standard notebook phrases. Distance, direction, speed. It’s your job—you stay detached. It was only when he stopped short and the truck lurched on, clearing the main road, that I noticed where we were. Charing Cross Hospital. Just south of Hammersmith. On the left, just ahead, on the far side of the lights: Charing Cross Hospital.
I never told Sarah. Or Marsh.
A necessary moment? A moment of truth? A self-administered shock? The life that used to be his, right there, about to pass in front of him.
They might have had to carry him in. It might have been handy. Accident and Emergency. Someone might have realized who he was. My God—that’s Bob Nash.
But he came to a halt.
She might have had to go and visit him. She might have been the visitor. Never knowing how lucky she was—that this was really incredible luck in disguise. It might have saved them both. The danger list, then off it. It might have glued them together again as surely as his mending bones.
“Lucky to be alive.” Oh, but more than that. Doubly that.
And I’d have been nowhere to be seen.
Or he might have died. That way too. She’d never know. Never have to know—what she was capable of. Thinking it the cruellest possible thing (and where could she have turned for comfort?). A “tragic accident”—at that point. Thinking even—it had been her “concession”—it was all her fault.
But she wouldn’t have to be in this place now. Visiting time, like a hospital ward. Neither of us would.
A screeching, bucking halt. Pedestrians froze, turned, looked, walked on. But I don’t think the truck driver, up in front in his cabin, even noticed what had happened.
Charing Cross Hospital: staring him in the face.
The lights were still on red. He’d stalled. He restarted. The lights went green. And now—if he was himself again, if the shock had worked—he might have driven straight on (I wished it, truly, willed it): Fulham Palace Road to Putney Bridge, then Putney, Putney Hill, Wimbledon Common … home.
But he turned left at Lillie Road and I followed him back to the flat.
Yes, I’m the lucky man.
• • •
The street just as before. Streets don’t change, they don’t breathe a word, they don’t tell a soul. He parked, got out, walked to the front door and, as he’d done so many times before (did he keep a count?), let himself in.
Ten minutes to eight. I’d slipped into a space on the far side, twenty yards or so back. Now, more than ever, it could hardly have entered his head that he was being watched.
So—should I have stopped watching? Got out, crossed the street, tapped him on the shoulder? Made it my business?
Mr. Nash? Robert Nash? Police. Would you step this way?
The front door closed behind him. The light went on upstairs. It might still have meant nothing: he had charge of the flat, after all. There might have been something he’d left there. Some simple unimportant matter. (After nearly driving into a truck?)
But anyway, could you begrudge it, if he could
n’t resist it? A last look, on his way home. A last look while the room, the bed, still had a trace of warmth. While the scent of her was still there.
Nearly eight o’clock. She was in the air.
And here perhaps anyway he could truly say his farewell. Settle the balance of his life. Turn himself back into the husband of his wife.
I don’t think Sarah would have begrudged it, if that was all it was.
But how long do you give it? How much time? A farewell. Just to that flat, to all it had meant? And I’d seen his face at Departures—his face like a departure itself. I’d seen him speed up at a red light.
Even so, I didn’t move, I didn’t leap from my car until at least ten minutes had passed. It’s true, I just sat there. I let whole minutes pass. Settling, maybe, the balance of my own life. I didn’t take prompt and decisive action based on reasonable suspicion and surmise, I didn’t take due initiative—prepared, if necessary to arouse neighbours to gain entry. Police. Police, open up.
It’s true, Marsh. I sat there. Not being a policeman any more. Nothing to do with me. I may even have clutched the steering wheel as if I was clinging to a rock.
Five, ten—fifteen minutes. Dinner was cooking. The wine was breathing. Sarah was looking at the minutes ticking too.
You cross a line.
I opened my door, sprinted across the street. And it was then he would have seen me—seen me and not seen me—for the second time that night. I’ll never know. He appeared at the front door just as I reached the front gate. I had to stop short, just like he’d done at the lights. Turn myself into some chance passer-by—acting a little oddly it’s true, catching my breath. But he came up the front path as if he hadn’t seen me, brushed past me, heading for his car as if he might have stepped right through me.
And that’s what he looked like, already, a ghost.
49
“How’s the Empress?” I say.
“She’s fine. She’s in the South of France. She’s bought a yacht.”
“Good for her.”
“She’s over sixty, but still going strong.”
“Life in the old girl yet.”
Small talk, dodging the issue. Time’s precious—but you just play cards.
Nearly a quarter past four. In a couple of minutes they’ll blow the whistle. No extra time. I’ll have to leave before anything’s begun. She’ll have to live through it all alone.
Will there ever be a year when this day gets forgotten, like a neglected birthday, then gets remembered, afterwards, with a jolt? A stab.
No, I don’t think so.
Nearly a quarter past four. I was outside the flat, the first time. She was sharpening a kitchen knife. Not even dreaming.
I say what I’ve said countless times, when it’s nearly time to go. “I’m with you, sweetheart, I’ll be with you.”
Though today, of all days, it can’t be true. Because she’ll be with Bob. His day. And ghosts aren’t like other visitors. They can come any time, they can pass through walls.
Who’d begrudge him? Today. But the black taste wells up.
No, he can’t make it, he’s sorry—he told me. Unavoidably detained. You’ve got me instead.
As if I should stand in for him entirely: the whole rerun. His double. And she’d raise the knife and see it was me. And this time, really, she’d stop.
Jealous—of a corpse. She can read my thoughts. Her eyes can see inside my head.
“I’ll be with you.”
“I know.”
But jealous of Bob alive. She knows that too. Jealous of all those years, good long years—twenty-four of them—ending like they did. And it might have been me and her in the first place. Me and Sarah. The absurdity. And Bob would have found someone else. And we’d all be happy, all still be alive. The absurdity.
And I might have been a gynaecologist and Bob might have been a cop.
You play cards, you shuffle the pack.
Twenty-four years. Except time doesn’t work like that. Time doesn’t make its meanings like that. Visits, moments, days. This day, this clear cold day, the air diamond sharp.
Two minutes. What can you say with two minutes left?
A bedside closeness, a hospital hush. As if tonight’s the night, when I’m gone, she’ll go in for her operation. Touch and go. Ha—under the knife.
Though there’s a knife, I know it, already stuck, grating and rusting, in her heart.
One day I’ll pull it out.
I’m with you, I’ll be with you. It’s what I’ve always said, even right at the beginning—when she didn’t want to hear. What tosh. This won’t go on.
But one day she said (a smile like sunlight on stone), “It’s the wrong way round, George. Can’t I be with you?”
I say it now. “I wanted you to be with me, there, today. It’s been such a—beautiful day. I wanted us to be standing there together by that grave. You know, sweetheart—there’s a moment when you have to walk away, turn your back and walk away. I didn’t know when to do it. How much time? I wish you’d been there beside me so you could have said when. Do you understand me? You’d have known best. I wished you’d been there so I could have heard you say, ‘Let’s go now, George. Let’s go.’
“And the thing is, sweetheart, whenever you’d have said it, whenever you’d have decided, he wouldn’t have stopped us.”
50
Marsh said, “Wouldn’t Mr. Nash have got home safely without you following him?”
“I wanted to be sure.”
He looked at me sharply but patiently. A tactful senior officer dealing with an over-zealous junior. As if he were really my Super. An inside matter. Cop to cop. This needn’t go any further.
“What did you think he would do?”
But I wasn’t going to tell him. That he’d gone to the flat first, that I’d waited outside, a second time—maybe all of fifteen minutes. Waited even when I might not have waited, shouldn’t have waited. Waited while something tilted and teetered inside me.
And up above (you have to put yourself in the scene), he would have thought: where else was there to be? Where else was there to go?
It used to be how it was done once, in other times, in other countries, when some high-ranking officer had disgraced himself, done what he shouldn’t. He’d be left in a room with a pistol, the door locked. His fellow officers waiting outside for the shot.
In a different world, a different age. Splendid uniforms, grim rules. The age of Napoleon and Eugénie, for example.
I waited.
And he wasn’t the sort, was he? A sane and responsible medical man, a senior consultant. To be reduced to this. A room in Fulham, its four walls closing in on him.
I watched. Lights behind curtains. And we’re all policemen, aren’t we? Nothing’s just a matter for the police.
Don’t think, Marsh, you’ll leave it all behind. Don’t think you’re a free man.
He stroked his jaw. Past midnight. Bob was four hours dead.
“You seem to have been very concerned for his welfare.”
I wasn’t going to tell him. Or tell Sarah either. But she’d have known anyway: written in his face. All her patience, all her conceding—all her scheming with me—all her waiting and hoping: to welcome home a ghost.
And now she too was in a place of no escape. A locked cell—just yards away. Four cold clammy walls. How could she have come to this?
The fug of interview rooms. The matter-of-factness of police stations. In the background a smell of disinfectant.
“I wanted to be sure. For Sar—, for Mrs. Nash’s sake. For my client’s sake.”
I saw the look on Marsh’s face.
“She hadn’t asked you to deliver him to her door.”
“I didn’t.”
“No. A pity—maybe. Do you normally go to such lengths for a client?”
“I’m a free agent.”
“Sarah Nash’s agent. You mean you didn’t have to act like a detective just doing a job?”
Or not a
ct, not move.
He means: like a good steady cop.
But I did act. I got out of my car. I crossed the street. I ran, for dear life.
And he found a way out, an escape route, somehow, down the stairs, out the front door. There wasn’t any shot. We might have collided on the front path. I can’t remember if I felt glad. He got to the gate before I did, stepped past me. I stepped aside. I let him go.
Let her go, Marsh, let her go. The words knocking inside my head, as if to burst out too from a little cruel room. Have me, put the cuffs on me. But let her go.
I should have stopped him. Shouldn’t I? I should have arrested him—God knows for what. For being alive? A citizen’s arrest.
A street in Fulham. Victorian red brick. A street full of comfortable law-abiding folk. A good part of town.
I’d have spared him, I’d have spared Sarah. I’d have kept the peace.
I should have said, “Don’t go home, not just yet. You don’t know me, but—” I should have kept him in for questioning, for interview, to assist with inquiries.
“Not just yet. Let’s find somewhere, let’s go somewhere where we can talk.”
51
Time’s up. A sudden activity. It’s like the moment when a ship leaves. All non-passengers disembark. Where do prisoners sail?
“Take care, sweetheart, I’ll see you soon.”
It always feels like desertion. Today it feels like treachery. How will she get through these hours? As I make my way back with the others, through the doors and check-points, there isn’t even that usual feeling of reprieve. You’re lucky, they’re letting you go this time. That was just a warning.
The screws count you out as if there still might be a catch. A catch? A concession? The tap on the shoulder: No, not you—you stay.
Do they know it was today, this very day? There he goes and it’s two years now, to the day. It must mean something.