by Dan Holloway
When he saw Emily through the window of the coffee room, impatience sculpted in her figure, he knew exactly why he’d called her, and it surprised him almost more than anything else in the past week and a half. He needed to be with someone who was good. With Emily, there was nothing hidden, nothing dark, nothing dangerous. She was someone with no contours of ambivalence at all. He had forgotten what goodness was like. No, he had never even believed it existed, and almost certainly he didn’t now, but as he saw her he felt the immense strength that something quite so simple could provide. Something that doesn’t look to the right or the left or ask why. Something that was everything Tommy wasn’t. He knew his reason for calling her was ever bit as patronising as the reason he hadn’t called Rosie, but he didn’t care. Now wasn’t the time for nuance. Now was the time for paragons and ideals, time for him to turn for inspiration to his favourite hero from years ago. And, to his shock, that was Emily.
“Tommy, what are you playing at?” She was as close to furious as he could imagine her.
“Sorry.” It was something he seemed to be saying a lot recently.
“No, Tommy, sorry doesn’t cut it. I shouldn’t be here. I have a job, I have a life, I have a husband I love, and I have a best friend who’s in love with you.”
Tommy took a moment to register what she’d said, and then he found himself smiling despite everything that was happening. There was no point disguising how it made him feel, and he could see at once in the way her face softened that Emily knew his smile was real. “I’m not going to say it,” he said. “I haven’t told her yet, and I want to tell her first. I want to get it right this time.” Perhaps that was too close to home, he thought, but Emily still seemed to be smiling.
“So you’re in love with her?”
“It was you who said we should get together. Or that’s what she said, anyway.”
“OK, I’ll take the credit. But in love already. That’s a bit quick.” There was no bitterness, no judgment in her voice; just a statement of fact. “I take it that’s not why you called me.”
“No. I called you because I feel like shit. I needed to offload on someone and as you hardly have me down as Mr Wonderful anyway, you’re it. I didn’t put that well, did I?”
“No, Tommy, you didn’t.”
“Now I’m here it doesn’t seem so important.” Tommy shrugged. He could feel himself withering under her gaze, could sense the exasperation in her breathing, and he knew he deserved all of it. “That’s worse, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” They grinned together. Making a joke out of it was the only way they’d get anywhere. “It’s to do with Becky, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Does Rosie know about this? Or is it more than just meeting me you’re keeping secret?”
“She knows I’m poking around.”
“Does she know where you’re poking?”
“This is probably an unhelpful metaphor.” Tommy laughed. Emily joined in. “She knows I’m trying to find things out about Becky’s dad.”
“Which implies that’s not all you’re doing.”
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
“I’m sorry.” There was no way to put it tactfully. “Becky thinks you got it wrong. She thinks Charles was murdered.” Tommy waited, watched to see what her judgment would be. There was none.
“I thought she probably did. Let me guess. She thinks you’ve got a bigger brain than me so you’re more likely to get it right? It’s OK, you have got a bigger brain than me. But I hope at least some of the many brain cells realise that if you have a shred of evidence that a crime has taken place you should go straight to the police.”
“Lecture over?”
“It’s not a lecture, Tommy, it’s advice. I really didn’t imagine I’d ever say this two weeks ago, but it’s advice from a friend. If you, or this girl you’ve known less than a fortnight but seem willing to put everything, including your sanity, on the line for, think Professor Shaw was murdered, and personally I see no reason whatever to think that he was, please don’t get involved in some vigilante crusade.”
Tommy reached over and took her left hand, and for the first time he noticed her wedding ring. It must suit her being married, he thought, if her ring seems so natural that he’d only just spotted it. He felt a momentary wave of happiness that she had found someone. “I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
“Promise me.” She looked straight into him, and squeezed his hand.
He knew there was a voice somewhere telling him that everything she said was right. But he also knew that right now he couldn’t afford to look where it was coming from.
“I won’t,” he repeated. “Thank you.”
*
Emily watched him leave. She felt for a minute as though she wanted to cry but it soon passed. As it passed she knew that the time when she wondered what kind of father he would be, what kind of lover, what kind of husband, had passed as well. Forever. And its passing wasn’t a good reason for a tear. Those questions belonged to someone else now, and that was a good thing. Besides, now he was her friend, and that made her happy. And worried for him.
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61
Tommy felt his head clearing as he walked back up Parks Road, past Keble College and the Natural History Museum. He knew it wouldn’t last, but he could feel something of Emily’s strength pulling up the blinds. He could feel her holding his hand and gently encouraging him, Come on, Tommy. Just a little longer. Just think clearly for a little longer and let me take care of everything else. Don’t worry about afterwards. I’ll be here to help put you together again afterwards, and so will Rosie. If he’d been more impressionable, he thought, he would have wondered if this is what people mean by the voice of God, the still small voice of calm. And if he had been more cynical he would have wondered if he was just projecting the voice of his therapist.
He sat at his laptop and opened the Word file back up, Things we can only do once. Why did he think the answer was in here? Because things you can only do once are the things that really mattered to Shaw. Not just philosophically. Tommy was certain of that. These were the things that mattered to him in life. That was why waiting had been so important to him, because these are the things that you cannot repeat. Wait a second too long and the moment has passed; not long enough, even by a second, and you’ve lost the chance to get it right forever. It was the same fragile perfection that existed in the incarnation of Christ, something else that could only happen once.
Charles hadn’t sold Carol to Ellison. Tommy knew that for sure. He’d seen the room where he’d kept her until very recently. He wanted more than ever to ask Becky if she’d ever felt the pull of her twin, and wondered if it would ever be an appropriate question to ask. There were so many questions. Too many. It’s not the right time to ask them now, he told himself, not even whether it was also the room where she died, although in his subconscious the gape of blood-red paint was all the answer he had needed.
Just a little longer. He allowed himself a moment of relief for Jane Ellison. Whatever vileness had burrowed its way into her husband’s head had stayed there. Perhaps she could hold onto normality a little longer. Maybe she’d never know just how close she came to losing it. It certainly wouldn’t be him who told her.
Just what did you do with her, Professor? Tommy went through the list. Make the fundamental choice in your life. You certainly did that, didn’t you? Jacob I loved but Esau I hated. You chose one fate for Becky, one for Carol, but which was which? Raise a child. How did you raise her, Professor? However you did it, that wasn’t the point, was it? Whatever you did with her you were basically just fattening her up like meat.
Tommy felt himself drawn to one line on the screen, the one line his eyes refused to look at because it was little better than the answer he had believed to be true until this morning. Have sex with someone you have loved as long as you can remember. He went over everything Ellison had said to him. What if Ellison hadn’t
been trying to parry him away from a terrible secret, but had just been telling things as they were. Charles hadn’t been with a woman since he left Haydn. Why not? Is that what Carol was? Hadn’t Knightley said something similar when Tommy met him at the memorial service? The perfect shag, he’d called it, one of Charles’ great thought experiments, every word, every detail planned out over the course of 18 years.
Something else was knocking at the door. No, it was in his pocket, “Tommy”
“Just keeping you on your toes.”
“I haven’t forgotten, Becky. I’ll be there tonight. 6 OK?”
“6 is great.”
“Good. Look, I need to go now if you want me to make it for tonight.”
“Later.”
That was it. The phone. Wagner. There it was on the list, Go to the Bayreuth Festival. And the sound files, the different recordings from Tristan and Isolde.
That’s it, isn’t it, Professor? Tristan and Isolde. A yearning so great it can be satisfied only in death. You raised her for 18 years. Somehow you kept her away from the world and you taught her exactly what she needed to know for that one night. Every time you saw her you knew what was going to happen. You knew you were going to have her, but you knew that you couldn’t touch her yet. No wonder you never looked at another woman. Nothing else mattered. No-one else mattered. Is that why you wouldn’t see Becky? Because you couldn’t see her, couldn’t bear to. Started seeing her again just after she was 18, didn’t you? Did she remind you of that night, help you to relive it? No, they were twins, but to you they were as different as if they had been born to mothers on opposite sides of the world. Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. That’s the whole point of children, isn’t it? What they are in themselves is absolutely nothing. They are only what we decide they are going to be. Whatever you had in store for Carol, the opposite was there for Becky. Becky wasn’t special, she was absolutely mundane. Against everything natural, you chose Carol as your partner, but Becky was just your daughter. When Carol was dead you could make your peace with her, tell her you were sorry and let her get on with her life, just like any other crap father.
Tristan and Isolde had died in each other’s arms. Charles hadn’t died, and that was why. He would have left exactly the right time before, and exactly the right time after, and then he would have killed himself. If the killer had just let him be for a little while longer, until he had finished making whatever kind of peace he wanted to make with Becky, he would have killed himself and Becky would never have had to be hurt. Jacob I loved but Esau I hated. Carol the lover, but Becky the daughter. Carol dead, but Becky safe. At the whim of a capricious father. It’s the whole foundation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. If only the killer had learned to wait.
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62
What did the Sansoms talk about at night? He couldn’t get the question out of his head, but it had a new significance now. Did they ever discuss Shaw, ever discuss Becky and Carol, ever discuss what one of them had done? If they did, Tommy was sure they would have constructed their alibis on a foundation of solid granite. A choice once made and never reneged on. Whatever choice each had made it clearly involved the other. He hoped they spent their nights reading their books and papers rather than the nuances of each other’s bodies.
It was time to go, just in case Harry changed his mind once he got home, and made the call. They should at least have finished lunch by now. It would be best to catch them separately.
Tommy could feel the acid rising in his throat as he approached Elgin Square, passed the tower on his right, stood to cross the road, and found himself staring at the entrance to his old college. So much had happened since the first time he had stood here, an eager teenager early for an interview, slightly overwhelmed, with a strange feeling he identified as nerves telling him it wasn’t too late to turn away, but knowing somehow that his destiny lay through that giant arch.
He had that feeling again now, but now, after years of sickness, he knew exactly what it was. He listened in vain for the voice telling him it wasn’t too late to turn back, but he knew that it wouldn’t come. It had been too late the moment he had walked into Professor Shaw’s study. He knew surely now as he had sensed vaguely then. His destiny lay through that giant arch.
He crossed, oblivious to the hum of traffic, the shouts of the bus driver wanting to pull away, the oohs of pedestrians waiting to see if the taxi would bother stopping to let him through. He couldn’t take any of it in, couldn’t afford to. He sensed that the moment he turned even slightly to one side, his head would be flooded and the truth would be lost. No, he had to preserve what shred of sanity he had left. He would need it.
As the shadow of Martyr’s Tower fell over him, Tommy nodded to one side without looking whether there was a bulldog there or noticing if there was a greeting. His eyes blinked as he re-emerged into the sunshine but he didn’t register it as light. Nor, as he walked by wire towards the fountain in the middle of the Quad, was he aware of his name. Not the first time, not the second, nor the third. Nor did he see the figure running towards him in his peripheral vision.
Only when the arm on his shoulder exerted enough for to make his footing falter did he look round. He looked at the face but for several seconds he didn’t really see it.
What he saw sucked the blood from his face, and it was all he could do to keep standing.
“Tommy, what’s wrong with you?”
“You haven’t the first clue,” Tommy said, his facility for pleasantries long gone.
“Yes.” Her eyes didn’t leave his. “Yes, I think I do.”
Jane turned him gently and led him across the quad. She opened the door and took him downstairs into the kitchen that was scented with boiling herbs and a meat that was probably chicken. She sat Tommy at the sturdy oak table and set about making a mug of tea to bring some heat to his blood-drained hands.
If Tommy had had any feelings left he would have used them to fight himself back from taking in his surroundings, with their warmth and homeliness, their welcoming normality that was built at best upon a sham, at worst, well, those were thoughts that were a long way beyond him now. But there was no danger of his taking any of it in. His only connection to the events of the past two weeks was a general awareness through the grey fog that had fallen over him that he should be glad of the numbness.
After a length of time he had no way of measuring, Tommy felt the heat of a steaming mug of tea pressed into his hands, soft pads of fingers warm against his knuckles, holding his hands in place. Eventually he looked up.
Jane smiled, her eyes burning further warmth into him. She let go of his hands. “It’s good to have you back with us.”
As the steam from the tea burned its way slowly through the fog he began to piece his thoughts back together. Eventually he looked up again, into Jane’s friendly eyes, and the lurch he felt coming from his stomach was enough to tell him that he really was back. For the moment.
“Good,” Jane said matter-of-factly. “We need to talk.”
Tommy feigned blankness but he knew that the lights had come back on and were shining right into a deep vacuum somewhere behind his eyes.
“It must have been almost twenty years ago now.” She was no longer smiling, Tommy registered, but if there was pain then either he was inured to it or it was hidden too well and too far for him to see. Jane continued. “I’d gone to bed early after dinner and left them to their interminable chunterings. Having Charles round always gave me a headache for some reason. I think it must have been the constant intensity. Anyway, that night I couldn’t get to sleep, and the headache never developed properly, so I went down to the living room to write some letters. It’s immediately above Barnard’s study and they must have thought I was spark out as usual because they were talking particularly loudly. Or maybe it was just that something in my subconscious tuned in to what they were saying.”
Tommy could feel himself fighting the urge to leave. It’s too late for that, he thought. Something he co
uldn’t quite place made him feel he owed it to Jane to listen. Possibly it was the feeling that whatever it was she was going to say, this was the first, and maybe the last, time she would ever say it.
“They were talking about sex. Not like giggling schoolboys or faceless suits getting lary on a Friday night.” The casual colloquialism of her language took Tommy by surprise, as if she had had to put on a mask to allow herself to talk about it. “And they weren’t discussing it as an academic point. There was something about the way they were talking that made me feel as though I shouldn’t be listening, as though I was intruding on something private.” She added absolutely flatly: “I would give everything now to have put my things away and gone back upstairs. But it was impossible not to listen.
“They must have been talking about what felt best, physically best. I remember every word of what they said. ‘So you think it’s best in the mouth?’ Charles said. ‘What makes that so good? The combination of the soft moistness of the cheeks and the flickering wet warmth of the tongue?’ It was as though they were reading the script from a porno film, but were reading it absolutely deadpan. ‘No, it’s too slack like that,’ Barnard said. ‘No matter how hard they suck or what they do with their lips. No, the mouth is best when they wrap their lips over their gums. If they do that right they can get a tightness that’s almost an exact fit, and then they can hold you in place while they use their tongue.’