This Must Be the Place

by Maggie O'Farrell

  ‘The point is, my darling,’ Pascaline is saying, as her daughter hurls stone after stone into a nearby rockpool, ‘that his behaviour had nothing to do with you. Nothing at all.’

  ‘I’m don’t know about that. It’s not as if I—’

  ‘None of it was your fault.’

  Claudette sighs. ‘You don’t think perhaps you’re a little bit biased?’ She squeezes her eyes shut. ‘You know, I really don’t want to talk about this any more.’ But then she finds that, in fact, she does. ‘I just wonder,’ she says to her mother, as she sits on the beach, ‘whether I did the right thing. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked him to leave. I thought that maybe some time apart might give him the jolt he needed. But now everything is so much worse with him, of course, and I still wonder if—’

  ‘He needs to get well,’ Pascaline interrupts, ‘before you can even consider—’

  ‘I know that,’ Claudette says irritably, ‘you don’t need to tell me that. But maybe he can’t get better on his own in London. Maybe he needs to be here, with us, with—’

  ‘The man is an alcoholic,’ Pascaline says bluntly. ‘That would not be easy for you, for the children. You want to know what I think?’

  ‘Not really,’ Claudette mutters.

  ‘I think that the person you are missing today is the old Daniel. Not the current one. Yes?’

  Claudette moves her feet in semi-circles about herself. Could this be true or is it just more of her mother’s intrusive psychobabble? She presses her hand to her eyes. She can’t tell any more. She can no longer think clearly about Daniel.

  The dogs come and stare at her, martyred, affronted at this hiatus in their walk, as Pascaline offers more ideas as to why Daniel went off at the deep end and a list of reasons why Claudette should sell the Donegal house and move to Paris.

  Daniel sits on a bench next to the duckpond. Dusk gathers itself around him, spreading out from the branches of the trees. He shivers inside his coat. There are footsteps from the path behind him, people going to and fro, back from work, back from school, on their way home. In front of him, across the pond, lights come on in the windows of the big houses.

  In one hand, he holds a bottle of whiskey and a joint, in the other the little amber bottle. The tip of the joint glows orange and its smoke drifts sideways in the evening breeze.

  He is alternating, one toke on the joint, one sip of the whiskey, one pill from the bottle (he refuses to say ‘pillule’).

  It is proving to be an interesting combination.

  The ducks draw silver lines after themselves over the surface of the pond. A siren sounds from the north, getting closer and then veering away. Somewhere to his left, a horse-chestnut tree is dropping its fruit: conkers land every few minutes with a cracking thud, green, spiked cases splitting open, the polished seeds rolling free. None of it matters. Nothing matters. His daughter is dead and nothing can bring her back.

  Claudette moves through the house, pen and paper in her hand. Paint bathroom, she writes, underneath Reseal windows Ari’s room and Stair carpet?.

  She needs to give this place a revamp, a new life. Out with the old, in with the new. All this gloom today is caused by an uncertain feeling that life is moving on, the children getting older, and maybe – just maybe – the idea of being alone is a disquieting one.

  Because, Claudette thinks, as she sits down on the top stair, how likely is it that she will meet someone else? She will stay in this house, despite Pascaline’s exhortations to move to Paris, and realistically how many potential husbands will come wandering up her track, carrying the ashes of their grandparent in a box?

  Claudette looks down the curve of the stairs and up at the skylight, which is turning a deep, inked blue. ‘The witching hour,’ Daniel always called this time of day. He used to go out in it, every evening, and have a last cigarette as he walked the perimeter of the garden. He liked the moment, he said, when it was neither day nor night, but indefinably both.

  She puts down her pen, she puts down her list. She picks up her phone. Everything, she sees, has been leading to this. She was always going to call Daniel today: that much was clear from when she got up. It was written into the weft of the day: Claudette will call Daniel.

  She presses the buttons. She waits for the ring. She wants to hear his voice. She wants to say hello. She wants to say, I am sitting at the top of the stairs and it is halfway between day and night. And: our children are with your son, on a causeway made by a giant. And: I am thinking of you. And: do you still think of me?

  Daniel walks through the lobby to his flat, registering, as he always does, its unpleasantly high temperature, compared with the sharp air outside. Another thing living in that house in Ireland has done to him is that he cannot stand central heating any more. He keeps his flat at Arctic levels, much to Ari’s amusement.

  At his door, he can’t find his keys. He feels in his coat pockets, but they contain only the empty amber bottle and conkers, handfuls of them.

  He tries his trouser pockets, hearing now that the telephone inside his flat is ringing. Who might it be? Ari? One of his sisters, calling with unwanted advice, numbers of grief counsellors, offers of visits?

  Still no keys. Is it possible he left them behind? Has he locked himself out?

  The phone continues to ring. Daniel tries his coat pockets again, his shirt pocket – nothing. He jumps up and down on the spot, hearing the unmistakable jangle of his keys. Still, the phone rings.

  He pats himself all over. There. They’re in the top pocket of his coat. He remembers now transferring them when he was bending to collect the conkers.

  He yanks them out, he slots one into the door, he unlocks it, he steps through and, as he does so, the phone falls silent.

  Daniel stands for a moment in his hallway. The flat breathes its emptiness at him. He hangs up his coat. He makes his way to bed, flicking off the lights, one by one.

  An Unexpected Outcome

  Transcript of interview between Timou Lindstrom and a journalist for the London Courier

  Dalsland, Sweden, 2014

  LC: Testing, testing. [Background noise, some shuffling, throat clearing, the machine switched off then on again, the cry of a bird.] So, I am sitting here with Timou Lindstrom, by the side of a lake in Dals … how do you say it? … Dalsland?

  TL: [correcting him] Dalsland.

  LC: Dalsland.

  TL: [correcting him again] Dalsland.

  LC: [laughs] OK. Well, moving on. Is it OK if I record this interview?

  TL: Of course.

  LC: Great. So, Timou, we are in what I would call the middle of nowhere. We’re surrounded by forests, birds, lakes. We’re sitting outside a small wooden shack. It’s taken me almost two days to reach you. This is where you live now? How come you chose somewhere so remote?

  TL: No, I don’t live here. I live in Stockholm. This is my sommerstuga, my—

  LC: Your what?

  TL: Sommerstuga. A summer cabin. Swedish people like to go to a cabin in the woods for the summer.

  LC: Why?

  TL: Why do you think? To be with nature, to get away from the city, the everyday life, to reflect.

  LC: And what are you reflecting on?

  TL: Me? I’m not really reflecting right now. I’m working.

  LC: On what?

  TL: A new script.

  LC: You’re writing a script?

  TL: Yeah.

  LC: A film script or a—

  TL: A film script.

  LC: Can we talk a little bit about your return to directing?

  TL: Sure. What would you like to know?

  LC: Well, you’ve been – how would you put it? – out of the game for a while, haven’t you?

  TL: No.

  LC: Your last film came out almost twenty years ago. I’d call that a while, wouldn’t you?

  TL: My last film was eleven years ago. It was called—

  LC: The Unanswered Question, yes. That was self-financed, I believe? It didn’t get a screen
release?

  TL: It did in Sweden. It was—

  LC: OK, so your last major release was almost twenty years ago and since then you have made a self-financed—

  TL: A low-budget indie.

  LC: Right. A low-budget indie. But recently you’ve been working on a TV series that has won lots of awards here in Sweden, and it’s about to be shown in the UK and the States. You must be really pleased about that. How did you feel when you got the call, asking you to direct this series?

  TL: I was cautious, at first. I’d never worked in the medium of TV, never been involved in such a corporation like that, and I’ve been used to working with my own material, in my own way. I’d also never been a fan of the crime genre—

  LC: How come?

  TL: It can be too prescriptive, too formulaic. You know – a body is found, a detective is assigned, lots of danger and peril ensue, then at last a criminal is apprehended. I prefer to work with a looser structure, you know, an unexpected outcome. Ideally, I would—

  LC: But for you, getting that call, inviting you to direct this series, must have been a relief.

  TL: A relief?

  LC: Well, you had effectively been out of work for—

  TL: I have never been out of work. I’ve been working all this time.

  LC: You have?

  TL: Yes.

  LC: On what?

  TL: Many different things.

  LC: Would you be able to expand on that?

  TL: Not really. You will see.

  LC: I will see? These things you have been working on will see the light of day, they will be released?

  TL: Yes, I believe so. What you see from the outside is perhaps a career break but for me it has felt like lying in wait. I had to look at the rules I laid down for myself. I had to rethink their parameters for a changing world. I needed to regroup, to reassess after—

  LC: After Claudette Wells left you?

  [Pause.]

  TL: She didn’t leave me.

  LC: She didn’t?

  TL: No. She left you.

  LC: Me?

  TL: Not you personally but what you stand for. You are the synecdoche for what she ran away from.

  [A pause. TL can be heard disappearing into the undergrowth and fossicking around.]

  LC: What are you looking for?

  TL: [distant] It’s … [inaudible] … many of them … chan … possible to collect them and …

  LC: What?

  TL: Mushrooms. Chanterelles. They grow this time of year in … [inaudible] … fry them … [inaudible] … grouped like this … damp places …

  LC: Oh.

  [More distant sounds of cracking and branches, then the sound of TL returning.]

  LC: Wow. That’s a lot. Are you going to eat them?

  TL: We are going to eat them. You and me.

  LC: [anxious] Um. Are you sure they’re safe?

  TL: Of course.

  LC: Because I’ve read that—

  TL: Don’t worry. I’ve been doing this all my life. What do you think, that I might poison you? [Laughs]

  LC: [clearing throat] So, we were talking about Claudette Wells.

  TL: No, we weren’t.

  LC: You were saying that she didn’t leave you, that she was running from … the media? Is that what you meant?

  TL: [sighs] Do we really have to do this?

  LC: You don’t want to talk about Claudette?

  TL: Of course not.

  LC: Why not? Is it painful for you, still?

  TL: No, it’s not painful, it’s just … Can you imagine how many fucking times I’ve been asked these questions, over the years?

  LC: I imagine it’s a lot.

  TL: A hell of a lot.

  [Pause.]

  LC: You seem angry.

  TL: … [something inaudible]

  LC: Are you angry with her?

  TL: Come on. Let’s not talk about this. OK?

  LC: You’d have a perfect right to be angry with her.

  TL: … [something in Swedish]

  LC: She did walk out on what was to be your biggest film, which effectively put you out of work for two decades. Do you blame her entirely for your lack of output?

  TL: Listen, I was a film-maker before I ever met her. I never needed her. She was nothing – she was an actor and actors are always replaceable, always—

  LC: That’s not quite what she was, though, is it? She acted on other films but with you it was different. She co-wrote and co-directed your most successful, most experimental films, didn’t she, as well as appearing in them?

  TL: [mutters] Up to a point.

  LC: Up to a point? You’re saying it isn’t true? That those films were entirely your work? When the Rain Didn’t Fall was just you? And A Manual for Living? It wasn’t with her input?

  TL: No, I’m not saying that. I’m actually not saying anything. I do not want to discuss this. Ask me something else. Let’s talk about the TV series.

  [Pause.]

  LC: Did she tell you she was going to go? Did you know she was planning to disappear?

  [Silence.]

  LC: When she vanished, off the coast of Stockholm, did you know she was leaving?

  TL: [mutters] Of course I knew.

  LC: You did? She told you?

  TL: Not in so many words. But I knew. She was my partner, my almost-wife. You can’t live with somebody for as long as Claudette and I lived together and not know the workings of their mind. I knew she would do it, that she would … dematerialise, disappear herself. I knew it was a matter of time. I think … I think I just hoped she might finish that film first. It would have been our masterpiece, our best work. But she couldn’t do it. She had to go.

  [Silence.]

  LC: You’ve never said this before.

  [Silence.]

  LC: Are you in touch with her?

  [Silence.]

  LC: Timou, are you in touch with Claudette?

  [Silence.]

  LC: You shrugged just then. Was that a yes or a no?

  TL: It was a no-comment.

  LC: How about the son you had together? Are you in touch with him?

  [Silence.]

  LC: Was that another no-comment?

  TL: It was.

  LC: Timou, do you know where Claudette is?

  [Silence.]

  LC: Timou?

  [Silence.]

  LC: Is she even alive, do you know?

  [Silence.]

  LC: You have no idea where she is? None at all? Is she … could she be … nearby?

  TL: What – here? In Dalsland? You think I’m hiding her in the outhouse over there? In the attic? In the woodshed?

  LC: Are you?

  TL: [laughs] Yeah, sure, why not? You’ve hit the nail on the head. [Pretending to shout] Claudette! Time to come out! The game is up! There’s a journalist here who wants to talk to you!

  [Pause.]

  LC: Do you know where she is?

  TL: [mutters something.]

  LC: What was that?

  TL: I said, yes, OK?

  LC: You do? You know where she is?

  TL: Of course.

  LC: You know where Claudette Wells is? You can confirm she is alive?

  TL: I confirm nothing.

  LC: [excited but trying not to show it] But you’re saying you know her whereabouts?

  TL: I do. I have always known. Like I said, she was my almost-wife. We were each other’s worlds, for a time. I knew everything about her. She knew everything about me.

  LC: Can you tell us where she is?

  TL: What do you think?

  LC: I think that maybe—

  TL: You think I’m going to keep it a secret for all this time and then suddenly one day I will just tell it to some journalist who turns up at my sommerstuga?

  LC: Well—

  TL: You think I will do that? Tell it to a complete stranger?

  LC: I don’t know, I—

  TL: This is ridiculous.

  [Pause.]

 
LC: Do you think she will ever come back? Do you think you’ll ever work together again? Timou? Will Claudette ever come back?

  [Silence. TL reaches over and pulls out the microphone. He walks away. Interview ends.]

  To Hang On, To Never Let Go

  Lucas, London, 2014

  Lucas taps with his knuckles on the door of the flat, once, twice, three times.

  Nothing, just the roiling swell of television noise, coming from behind him, and the whirring sound of the lift, ascending in its shaft elsewhere in the building.

  He knocks again, louder. ‘Daniel? It’s me. Lucas. Are you in there?’

  He emailed Daniel a week earlier to say that he’d be in London and would like to meet; he’d suggested a café around the corner from the flat where Daniel was now living, in a brick mansion block near Chalk Farm tube station. He’d got no reply, but from what Ari had told him about Daniel’s current state, this wasn’t exactly a surprise.

  Lucas steps back and leans against the wall. What should he do? Stay or go? He could try Daniel’s mobile but Ari said that Daniel never answers it or never keeps it charged. One of the two.

  He should go, he decides, but then just as swiftly is sure that he should stick it out.

  The corridor of the mansion block has a distracting hum. Either the lighting or the heating has a defect somewhere, a loose connection, which is vibrating at wasp-pitch. Lucas is examining the ceiling out of habit, looking for an ailing light-bulb, a fuse about to blow, a short-circuiting security camera, when something about Daniel’s door catches his eye.

  At the pinhole centre of the tiny spyhole drilled through the door, Lucas detects a movement. A flicker, nothing more, a heartbeat of motion in the stillness beyond.

  Lucas pushes himself off the wall and taps his knuckles against the thickly painted door. ‘Daniel, I’d really like to talk to you. Could you open the door?’

  Still nothing, but Lucas is sure he hears the soft scrape of a footsole against floor.

  ‘We could go out for coffee, if you’d rather not invite me in. I found a good place around the corner. I’m sure you know it.’

  Lucas puts both hands against the door frame and leans into it.

  ‘Daniel, I just want to talk. Nothing more. Claudette says—’