He turned from the clothes cupboard. He said, “Why? The offer of money only makes the case against her blacker. Why would she lie?”
“Because…” Deborah plucked at the bedcovers as if she would find the answer there. She said deliberately, laying out her facts like cards, “He’d found her. He’d discovered who Maggie was. If he meant to return her to her real mother anyway, why wouldn’t she have taken the money and saved herself from gaol? Why did she kill him? Why didn’t she just run? She knew the game was up.”
St. James unbuttoned his shirt with great care. He examined each button as his fingers touched it. He said, “I expect it was because Juliet felt she was Maggie’s real mother all along, my love.”
He looked up then. She was rolling a bit of the sheet between her thumb and forefinger and watching herself do so. He left her alone.
In the bathroom he took his time about washing his face, brushing his teeth, and running a brush through his hair. He removed his leg brace and let it thump to the floor. He kicked it to lie by the wall. It was metal and plastic, strips of Velcro and polyester. It was simple in design but essential in function. When legs didn’t work the way they were supposed to, one strapped on a brace, or took to a wheelchair, or eased along on crutches. But one kept going. That had always been his basic philosophy. He wanted that precept to be Deborah’s as well, but he knew she would have to be the one to choose it.
She’d switched off the lamp next to the bed, but when he came out of the bathroom, the light behind him fell across the room. In the shadows he could see that she was still sitting up in bed, but this time with her head on her knees and her arms round her legs. Her face was hidden.
He flicked off the bathroom light and made his way to the bed, tapping carefully in a darkness that was more complete this night because the skylights were covered with snow. He lowered himself into the covers and lay his crutches soundlessly on the floor. He reached out and ran his hand along her back.
“You’re going to get cold,” he said. “Lie down.”
“In a moment.”
He waited. He thought about how much of life comprised that very act, and how waiting always involved either another individual or a force outside oneself. He had mastered the art of waiting long ago. It had been a gift imposed upon him with too much alcohol, oncoming headlamps, and the cormorant scream of skidding tyres. Through sheer necessity, wait-and-see along with give-it-time had become his armorial motto. Sometimes the maxims led him into inaction. Sometimes they allowed him peace of mind.
Deborah stirred beneath his touch. She said, “Of course, you were right the other night. I wanted it for myself. But I also wanted it for you. Perhaps even more. I don’t know.” She turned her head to face him. He couldn’t see her features in the darkness, just the shape of her.
“As retribution?” he asked. He felt her shake her head.
“We were estranged in those days, weren’t we? I loved you but you wouldn’t let yourself love me in return. So I tried to love someone else. And I did, you know. Love him.”
“Yes.”
“Does it hurt you to think about it?”
“I don’t think about it. Do you?”
“Sometimes it creeps up on me. I’m never prepared. All of a sudden, there it is.”
“Then?”
“I feel torn inside. I think how much I’ve hurt you. And I want things to be different.”
“The past?”
“No. The past can’t be changed, can it? It can just be forgiven. It’s the present that concerns me.”
He could tell that she was leading him towards something she had thought carefully through, perhaps that night, perhaps in the days that had preceded it. He wanted to help her say whatever it was she felt needed to be said, but he couldn’t see the direction clearly. He could only sense that she believed the unspoken would hurt him in some undefinable way. And while he wasn’t afraid of discussion—indeed, he’d been determined to provoke it ever since they’d left London—he found at the moment that he wanted discussion only if he was able to control its content. That she intended to do so, to an end he couldn’t clearly anticipate, caused him to feel the cold-hot mantle of wariness cloak him. He tried to shed it, couldn’t do so completely.
“You’re everything to me,” she said softly. “That’s what I wanted to be to you. Everything.”
“You are.”
“No.”
“This baby thing, Deborah. Adoption, the whole business of children—” He didn’t complete the sentence because he didn’t know where to go with it any longer.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s it. This baby thing. The whole business of children. Being whole in and of itself. That’s what I wanted for you. That would be my gift.”
He saw the truth then. It was between them the single dried bone of reality that they picked at and worried like two mongrel dogs. He’d grabbed it and chewed it for the years they’d been apart. Deborah had been worrying it ever since. Even now, he saw, when there was no need, she was grappling with it.
He said nothing further. She’d gone this far and he was confident she would say the rest. She was too close now to back away from saying it, and backing away was not, in fact, her style. She’d been doing so for months to protect him, he realised, when he needed no protection, either from her or from this.
“I wanted to make it up to you,” she said.
Say the rest, he thought, it doesn’t hurt me, it won’t hurt you, you can say the rest.
“I wanted to give you something special.”
It’s all right, he thought. It doesn’t change anything.
“Because you’re crippled.”
He pulled her down to him. She resisted at first, but came to him when he said her name. Then the rest of it was spilling out, whispered into his ear. Much of it didn’t make sense, an oddly combined jumble of memories and the experience and understanding of the last few days. He merely held her and listened.
She remembered when they brought him home from his convalescence in Switzerland, she told him. He’d been gone four months, she was thirteen years old, and she remembered that rainy afternoon. How she’d observed it all from the top floor of the house, how her father and his mother had followed him slowly up the stairs, watching as he gripped the banister, their hands flying out to keep him from losing his balance but not touching him, never touching him because they knew without seeing the expression on his face—which she herself could see from the top of the house—that he wasn’t to be touched, not that way, not any longer. And a week later when the two of them were alone—she in the study and this angry stranger called Mr. St. James a floor above in his bedroom from which he had not emerged in days—she heard the crash, the heavy thud of weight and she knew he’d fallen. She’d run up the stairs and stood by his door in her thirteen-year-old’s agony of indecision. Then she’d heard him weeping. She’d heard the sound of him pulling himself along the floor. She’d crept away. She’d left him to face his devils alone because she didn’t know what to do to help.
“I promised myself,” she whispered in the darkness. “I’d do anything for you. To make it better.”
But Juliet Spence had seen no difference between the baby she’d borne and the one she’d stolen, Deborah told him. Each was her child. She was the mother. There was no difference. To her, mothering wasn’t the initial act and the nine months that followed it. But Robin Sage hadn’t seen that, had he? He offered her money to escape, but he should have known she was Maggie’s mother, she wouldn’t leave her child, it didn’t matter what price she had to pay to stay with her, she would pay it, she loved her, she was her mother.
“That’s how it was for her, wasn’t it?” Deborah whispered.
St. James kissed her forehead and settled the blankets more closely round her. “Yes,” he said. “That’s how it was.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
BRENDAN POWER CRUNCHED ALONG the verge, heading into the village. He would have sunk up to his knees in th
e snow, but someone had been out earlier than he, and a path was already trodden. It was speckled every thirty yards or so with charred tobacco. Whoever it was out for a walk was smoking a pipe that didn’t draw much better than Brendan’s.
He himself wasn’t smoking this morning. He had his pipe with him in case he found himself in the position of needing to do something with his hands, but so far he hadn’t brought it out of its leather pouch, although he could feel the weight of it tapping securely against his hip.
The day after any storm was generally glorious, and Brendan found this one as splendid as the previous night had been frightful. The air was still. The early sun laid down great blazes of crystal incandescence across the land. Frost rimed the tops of the drystone walls. Slate roofs wore a thick coating of snow. As he passed the first terraced house on his way into the village, he saw that someone had remembered the birds. Three sparrows were picking at a handful of toast crumbs outside a doorway, and while they eyed him warily as he passed by, hunger kept them from scattering into the trees.
He wished he’d thought to bring something with him. Toast, a slice of stale bread, an apple. It didn’t matter. Anything edible to offer the birds would have served as a marginally credible excuse for being out in the first place. And he’d be needing an excuse when he returned home. In fact, it might be wise to start concocting one now as he walked.
He hadn’t thought of that earlier. Standing at the dining-room window, looking out beyond the garden to the vast white pasture that was part of the Townley-Young estate, he’d thought only of getting out, of tramping holes in the snow and driving his feet forward into a forever he could bear to live with.
His father-in-law had come to their bedroom at eight o’clock. Brendan had heard his military footsteps in the passage and had slid out of bed, freeing himself of the anchoring heaviness of his wife’s arm. In sleep, she’d thrown it diagonally across him so that her fingers rested in his groin. Under other circumstances he might have found this somnolent implication of intimacy quite erotic. As it was, he lay flaccid and mildly repelled and at the same time grateful that she was asleep. Her fingers wouldn’t be drifting coyly another inch to the left in the expectation of encountering what she deemed appropriate male morning arousal. She wouldn’t be demanding what he couldn’t give, pumping him furiously and waiting—agitated, anxious, then angry—for his body to respond. Tin-voiced accusations wouldn’t follow. Neither would the tearless weeping that screwed up her face and resounded through the corridors. As long as she slept, his body was his own and his spirit was free, so he slipped to the door at the sound of his father-in-law’s approach, and he cracked it open before Townley-Young could knock and awaken her.
His father-in-law was fully dressed, as usual. Brendan had never seen him otherwise. His tweeds, his shirt, his shoes, and his tie all made a careful statement about good breeding that Brendan knew he was supposed to understand and emulate. Everything he wore was just old enough to indicate the appropriate lack of interest in clothing that was inherent to the landed gentry. More than once Brendan had looked at his father-in-law and wondered idly how he managed the feat of maintaining an entire wardrobe that—from shirt to shoes—always looked at least ten years old, even when new.
Townley-Young gave a glance to Brendan’s woollen dressing gown and pursed his lips in silent disapproval at the messy bow Brendan had made when tying the belt. Manly men use square knots to keep their dressing gowns closed, his expression said, and the two tails falling from the waist are always perfectly even, you twit.
Brendan stepped into the corridor and shut the door behind him. “Still asleep,” he explained.
Townley-Young peered at the door’s panels as if he could see through them and make an evaluation of his daughter’s frame of mind. “Another rough night?” he asked.
That was certainly one way to put it, Brendan thought. He’d got home after eleven with the hope she’d be asleep, only to end up tussling with her beneath the covers in what went for marital relations between them. He’d been able to perform, thank God, because the room was dark and, during their biweekly nighttime encounters, she’d taken to whispering certain Anglo-Saxon pleasantries which he found allowed him to fantasize more freely. He wasn’t in bed with Becky on those nights. He chose his mate freely. He moaned and writhed beneath her and said, Oh God, oh yes, I love it, I love it to the image of Polly Yarkin.
Last night, however, Becky had been more aggressive than usual. Her ministrations possessed an aura of anger. She’d not accused or wept when he came into their bedroom smelling of gin and looking—he knew because he could not hide it—dejected and decidedly lovelorn. Instead, she’d wordlessly demanded retribution in the form she knew he wished least to make.
So it had indeed been a rough night, although not in the manner his father-in-law thought. He said, “A little discomfort,” and hoped Townley-Young would apply the description to his daughter.
“Right,” Townley-Young had said. “Well, at least we’ll be able to set her mind at rest. That should go far to making her more comfortable.”
He’d gone on to explain that the work at Cotes Hall would proceed without interruption at last. He gave the reasons why, but Brendan merely nodded and tried to look filled with anticipation while his life drained away like an ebbing tide.
Now as he approached Crofters Inn along the Lancaster Road he wondered why he had depended so much upon the Hall’s remaining unavailable to them. He was married to Becky, after all. He’d mucked up his life. Why did it seem a more permanent disaster if they had their own home?
He couldn’t have said. It was just that with the announcement of the Hall’s pending completion, he’d heard a door slam somewhere on his dreams of the future, as meaningless as those dreams had been. And with the door’s slamming, he felt claustrophobic. He needed out. If he couldn’t make an escape from the marriage, at least he could from the house. So out he went, into the frosty morning.
“Where you off to, Bren?” Josie Wragg was perched on top of one of the two stone pillars that gave way to the Crofters Inn car park. She had brushed it clear of snow and she was dangling her legs and looking as forlorn as Brendan felt. She was the word droop personified: in her spine, her arms, her legs, and her feet. Even her face looked heavy, with the skin pulled down round her mouth and eyes.
“Just a walk,” he said. And then he added because she looked so down-trodden and he knew exactly how that feeling throws one’s life into shadow, “Would you like to come along?”
“Can’t. These don’t work in the snow.”
These were the Wellingtons that she bounced upwards in his direction. They were enormous. They looked nearly twice the size of her feet. Over their tops at least three pairs of knee-socks were folded.
“Don’t you have some proper boots?”
She shook her head and pulled her knitted cap down to her eyebrows. “Mine’ve been too small since November, see, and if I tell Mum I need new ones, she’ll have a conniption. ‘When are you going to stop growing, Josephine Eugenia?’ You know. These’re Mr. Wragg’s. He doesn’t mind much.” She bounced her legs back against the frosty stones.
“Why do you call him Mr. Wragg?”
She was fumbling with a fresh packet of cigarettes, trying to rip off its cellophane wrapper with mittened fingers. Brendan crossed the road, took the packet from her, and did the honours, offering her a light. She smoked without answer, trying and failing to make a ring, blowing out steam as much as smoke.
“It’s pretend,” she finally said. “Stupid, I know. You don’t have to tell me. It makes Mum see red, but Mr. Wragg doesn’t care. If he’s not my real dad, I can pretend my mum had a big passion, see, and I’m the product of her fatal love. I pretend this bloke came to Winslough passing through on his way to wherever. He met Mum. They were crazy for each other but they couldn’t get married, of course, because Mum wouldn’t ever leave Lancashire. But he was the big love of her life and he set her on fire the way men are supposed
to set women on fire. And I’m how she remembers him now.” Josie flicked ash in Brendan’s direction. “That’s why I call him Mr. Wragg. It’s dumb. I don’t know why I told you. I don’t know why I ever say anything to anyone. It’s always my fault, isn’t it, and everyone’s going to know it eventually. I natter too much.” Her lip trembled. She rubbed her finger beneath her nose and threw her cigarette down. It hissed gently in the snow.
“Nattering’s no crime, Josie.”
“Maggie Spence was my best mate, see. And now she’s gone. Mr. Wragg says she won’t probably be back. And she was in love with Nick. Did you know that? True love, it was. Now they won’t see each other again. I don’t think it’s fair.”
Brendan nodded. “Life’s that way, isn’t it?”
“And Pam’s been gated for forever because her mum caught her last night in the sitting room with Todd. Doing it. Right there. Her mum put on the lights and started screaming. It was just like a film, Pam said. So there’s no one. No one special. It feels sort of hollow. Here.” She pointed to her stomach. “Mum says it’s just because I need to eat but I’m not hungry, you know?”
He did. He knew all about hollow. He sometimes felt he was hollow incarnate.
“And I can’t think about the vicar,” she said. “Mostly, I can’t think about anything.” She squinted at the road. “At least we have the snow. It’s something to look at. For now.”
“It is.” He nodded, tapped her knee, and continued on his way, turning down the Clitheroe Road, concentrating on the walking, putting his energy into that effort rather than into thought.
The going was easier on the Clitheroe Road than it had been on the way into the village. More than one person had forged through the snow, making the walk out to the church, it seemed. He passed two of them—the Londoners—a short distance from the primary school. They walked slowly, heads together in conversation. They looked up only briefly as he passed.
He felt a quick stab of sadness at the sight of them. Men and women together, talking and touching, promised to cause him unending grief in the coming years. The object was not to care any longer. He wasn’t quite sure if he’d be able to manage it without seeking relief.
Missing Joseph Page 55