by Nina Allan
Lucy designed bathroom tiles. What she really wanted to talk about was Ted. “He seemed such a nice guy,” she said. “I thought you were one of the lucky ones.”
* * *
“I dreamed of owning something like this,” said Natasha Bentall. “I think it’s every child’s dream really.” She was looking at the photographs of the work in progress Lenny had brought to show her, and telling her how she had once badgered her parents into taking her to see Queen Mary’s doll’s house at Windsor Castle.
“It frightened me actually,” she said. “It made me feel sick. Everything about it was so perfect it made the world outside seem spoiled.”
She showed Lenny some pictures of her godchild.
“Deborah is very precious to me,” she said. “She’s the closest I’ll ever come to a child of my own.”
The girl looked about four years old. She had straight mousy hair cut in a pageboy and extraordinary, bright green eyes.
“She’s the daughter of Frank’s best friend from university,” she said. She apologised to Lenny for her brother’s absence, and said he was running errands up in town. “To be honest, that’s why I asked you to come,” she said. “I get so nervous when he’s out of the house.”
“Nervous of what?” Lenny asked.
“That something might happen to him. I know it’s stupid but I can’t help it.”
Lenny stayed with her until Frank Bentall phoned to say he was on his way home, and then caught the train back up to town. Instead of going straight home she crossed the Harrow Road and went into Kensal Green Cemetery. The grounds were so extensive that once away from the main gates it was easy to get lost. The central avenues were kept neat and well-weeded but the minor pathways were overgrown, banked heavily on either side with foxgloves and stinging nettles.
Lenny followed one of the paths for almost a mile. The sounds of people and traffic seemed far away. ‘If the grey skies and rain-dashed cloisters of Brompton are a foretaste of purgatory, and the ivied avenues of Highgate are where the scholars and poets commune with the spirits of their ancestors, then Kensal Green is the interface between realities,’ Sylvester John had written in Darkroom Journal. ‘It is where the living bid the dead farewell and the dead return to share their news with the living. It is the bus terminal of the dead, a place of common memory and, above all, gossip.’
Malcolm’s funeral had been at Lambeth Crematorium. His father, William Foster, had been quick to make it family only and so there had been just the five of them: William and Deirdre Foster, herself and Ted, William’s sister Margaret who had driven over from Petworth. The Fosters had compassionate leave but were due to return to Hong Kong the next day.
Lenny didn’t know what had happened to Malcolm’s ashes. She couldn’t bear to think that the Fosters had taken them back to Hong Kong with them, so she didn’t think of it. She hoped they had been scattered at Lambeth, just a mile or two away across the river.
Malcolm’s notes didn’t say how Sylvester John died. He had been sixty-five years old and apparently healthy. Malcolm had told her that John had volunteered for the army in 1939 but had been turned down for active service on account of his short-sightedness. He had worked for the War Office instead, though his service record had subsequently been lost.
After the war John had stayed on in London, working for the MoD and renting rooms from a Major Neville Manley, who owned several substantial houses in Maida Vale. In the January of 1952, Sylvester John had fainted in the street close to St John’s Wood Station. He was diagnosed as suffering from strain due to overwork. He was kept under observation for ten days at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, then spent the following four months in a convalescent home. He resigned from the MoD and soon afterwards the first of his short stories, ‘The Mansion House’, was published in Capital Bizarre.
* * *
The police had brought the news at around midday. Ted began to tremble all over. By the time he ushered the two constables inside his teeth were chattering.
“Why didn’t he watch where he was going?” he said. “I bet he walked straight out into the road.”
Lenny had gone with him to identify the body but waited outside in the car. Her lips felt so numb that every time she spoke she sounded drunk.
Ted lay awake into the small hours, talking. He told Lenny about how he had once come home from a party to find Malcolm in the kitchen covered in blood.
“I thought it was paint at first,” he said. “There was glass all over the floor and in the sink but Mal said it was just an accident. I got him down to A&E and he seemed all right after that, although he wouldn’t go near the kitchen for several days. When I asked him what had happened he said he thought he’d seen a rat by the waste bin. I poured him a shot of brandy and sent him to bed. It took me ages to clear up the mess. I had a look around for rats but there was nothing, just a couple of dead woodlice.” He felt for her hand under the bedclothes. “He was always imagining things, even as a kid,” he said. “Always seeing stuff that wasn’t there.”
* * *
She would go to bed around midnight, exhausted, and be wide awake again at two. When this happened five nights in a row she picked up the phone and called Lucy. It was just after three o’clock.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” she said. “It’s just that I miss him so much.”
“What’s that?” said Lucy. “Where are you?” She sounded bleary-eyed and confused at first, but soon got back into her stride. She thought Lenny was talking about Ted. She began railing against Ruth Dawson.
“That stupid smile of hers,” she said. “As if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”
“I think she’s nice,” said Lenny. “I like her.”
“You were too good for him, Eleanor,” said Lucy. “That’s your trouble.”
She sounded fully awake now and seemed to be enjoying herself. She told Lenny about her new clients, who were renovating a house in Muswell Hill. “You should see the size of their order,” she said. “It’ll keep me going till next Christmas, if the cheque doesn’t bounce.” She chuckled softly and Lenny felt herself begin to relax. After a while Lucy asked if she was all right and Lenny said yes.
“Goodnight then,” Lucy said. When Lenny broke the connection, other sounds rushed in but less obtrusively. Traffic passed by on the main road, the engine noise ebbing and flowing with her own breathing.
* * *
The four rooms in the central compartment could only be opened in rotation. When one of the rooms was open the others lay flat, folded against one another like theatre scenery. Lenny made the interiors from folded paper, like the pop-up illustrations in the books she had loved as a child. One contained a street market, where barrow boys hawked canaries in bamboo cages. Another was a hothouse garden with carnivorous plants and exotic butterflies. One room was mostly empty, containing nothing but rusty paint tins and old packing cases. This was the room Lenny liked best, and whenever it appeared she would imagine herself sitting on the floor among the tea chests and unpacking them.
The things inside were wrapped in old newspapers: dustmen’s strike, scorching summer, great train robbery. There was a Doulton tea service, translucent white china scattered with pale pink roses. Ted had always hated factory-made porcelain. He said it was soulless. The window of the room overlooked a beach promenade. There was a white pavilion with gilded turrets and a pier that extended some distance out to sea. When Lenny opened the window she could hear the screams and laughter of children on the carousel, the clamour of the hurdy-gurdy. She longed to go out into the sunshine and look for Malcolm but when she tried the door to the street she found it was locked.
In the end she let herself out by the back door and went straight to Ashburnham Road. The doctor’s rooms on the ground floor still lay in darkness but there were lights on upstairs. Lenny rang the bell and waited. After a few moments a light appeared in the hallway and someone opened the door.
The woman was of medium height, with grey hair drawn back from her face in a
straggling ponytail. Her slim hand on the latch was covered in age spots. She was wearing a paisley-print housedress that reached to her ankles.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Lenny. “But did you know a famous writer once lived in your house?”
“It’s late,” said the woman. Her voice was clear but quiet. Lenny had to strain to catch her words.
“I could come back tomorrow morning if you’d prefer?”
“I don’t mean that,” said the woman. “I mean it’s been more than twenty years since he died and no one’s come looking before. I’ve lived here in this house for forty years.”
The hallway was dim and shabby but Sylvester John’s rooms upstairs had been kept exactly the way they were when he was alive. Lenny recognised certain things at once from the descriptions of Martin Newland’s collectables in Darkroom Journal: the antique tea caddy Newland used to store old postcards, the brass prayer bell that had been given to him by a retired army captain who had served in Burma. On a low table close to the door was the Satsuma-ware bowl with the red and gold dragons and next to it the pistol with the engraved barrel and mother-of-pearl handle, the so-called lady’s weapon.
Martin Newland had used it to threaten the rat-catcher, Harry Phelps, when Phelps demanded that Newland tell him what was in the cellar.
“I can make tea,” said the woman. “Or cocoa if you prefer?”
She disappeared, presumably to the kitchen. As soon as she was out of sight Lenny got up from the sofa and started looking around the room. She hoped she might find a photograph of Sylvester John, something that had thus far eluded her. There were two or three framed snapshots on the mantelpiece. One was of a sandy-haired girl in a blue blouse with the London Eye in the background. Another was of three men in a garden, laughing and drinking champagne, but she couldn’t tell if any of them was John.
Beside the photograph stood one of the hand-held projectors that had been popular when she was a child, a white Perspex box that lit up when you pushed a slide in. When she looked through the viewfinder she saw a deserted street flanked by tall terraces. In the foreground a set of steps led to an open front door. The sight of the door filled her with dread. Lenny put the box down quickly, not wanting to see any more of what might be inside.
She crossed to the window and looked out. The room overlooked the garden. There was a scrubby lawn, a row of dustbins, beyond that the roofs and gardens of Kensal Rise. It was deep dusk and there were lights on in most of the houses. The sky glittered with stars, and the winking lights of jets approaching Heathrow.
The woman served tea in the white porcelain cups with the pink roses. There were biscuits on a plate, yellow langues de chat that were slightly soft in the middle, as if the packet had been left open to the air.
“What was he like?” Lenny asked.
“He was a quiet and gentle man,” said the woman. “He always preferred writing to talking. Some people found that difficult to understand.”
Lenny finished her tea then asked if she could use the bathroom. The woman directed her into the hallway. The first door she tried opened into a large closet. There was a vacuum cleaner, some coats on hooks, a pile of old newspapers. She was about to shut the door when a faint glimmer of brightness caught her eye. She stepped towards it, pushing aside the coats. At the back of the closet was another door. A pale yellow light was shining from beneath the crack.
A flight of steps led downwards, the bare wood darkened with age and smooth from use. There was a light switch and a single bulb, ancient wallpaper stippled with faded roses.
Lenny leaned over, trying to see what lay at the bottom of the stairs. After about a dozen steps there was a small landing and then a corner turn, making it impossible for her to see all the way down. She moved forward hesitantly, descending as far as the half-landing. From there the steps went down into darkness, but from somewhere far away she could hear the distant sound of children’s laughter, the melancholy strain of the hurdy-gurdy.
“Mal?” she called softly, hoping the woman in the next room wouldn’t hear.
She stood very still and listened, but the sounds had gone. There was just the faint susurrus of air rising, warm and faintly foetid, from deep underground.
She fought her way free of the coats and closed the door. The one beside it led to the bathroom, a pleasant space with dove-grey tiles and a tall vase of wild flowers on the windowsill. The window, like the one in the living room, overlooked the garden.
* * *
The saleswoman wrapped the mug in a double page of the Evening Standard. Her hands were large and pink, smooth-skinned and perfectly formed, like the hands of a doll. She asked Lenny if she was old enough to remember Princess Anne’s wedding and Lenny said no, but that she’d recognised the picture immediately. It was the same as the one on the first day cover. Her brother was a keen collector of commemorative stamps.
“Her dress was so lovely, I thought,” said the saleswoman. “It had a high neck and long sleeves, and those hundreds of tiny pearls. She looked like a real queen in it. Dignified, you know. Not like that other one.”
On her way back to Wimbledon tube a storm broke – heavy thunder right overhead and then a cloudburst. Lenny sheltered with five others in the doorway of a newsagent’s, watching the rain cut steel diagonals in the steaming air. The downpour ended as suddenly as it had begun. Patches of blue appeared between the clouds. The sun glanced off the wet kerbstones and slid down through the cracks in the pavement.
When she arrived back at the house she went downstairs and continued with her unpacking. She began with the Royal Doulton tea set she and Malcolm had bought in Brighton. They had gone there because Mal had had an idea for a story about a Punch and Judy man. He’d spent a long time in the pier amusement arcade, watching the teenagers playing the fruit machines, the copper cascades of small change. Lenny had sat on a bench in the sun and listened to the laughter and screams of children on the fairground rides, the sweetly lamenting music of the hurdy-gurdy.
Though it was some years ago now, she remembered the day perfectly. The pink-and-white china was grubby with newsprint but it would come up beautifully once it was washed. She usually took Mal his tea at around four o’clock. Sometimes he was so deeply engrossed in his work he didn’t even look up when she put the cup down, but when she came back to collect it later it was always empty.
TEN DAYS
Ten days, ten hours, ten minutes. A man is murdered and a woman is charged. The hangman winds his watch and then goes home. I don’t suppose you remember that old Cher lyric, the one about turning back time, you’re too young. My best friend from law school, Frieda Solomon, used to play that track at the end of every party she ever threw, when we were solidly pissed and everyone was dancing, even those of us who never danced, when discussion had dissolved into barracking and all the ugly home truths began to come out.
The song is about someone who’s said something stupid and wishes she hadn’t. Hardly a crime, when you think of the appalling things people do to one another every day and can’t take back. What are mere words, you might ask, in the face of deeds? I’m not so sure, myself. What if the person Cher is singing to happens to be some hot-shot international trader with revenge on his mind? Or a fighter pilot? Or a president with his finger on the button? Who knows what someone like that might do, if you caught them at the wrong moment?
One thoughtless comment and it’s World War Three. Who knows?
* * *
If I could turn back time, my dear, I wouldn’t change a thing.
* * *
It takes about two minutes for a time machine to get going, in my experience. Nothing happens for what seems like forever, then just as you’re telling yourself you were an idiot to believe, even for ten seconds, that such a thing would be possible, the edges of things – your fingers, your sightlines, your thoughts – begin to blur, to stumble off-kilter, and then you’re gone. Or not gone as such, but there. Your surroundings appear oddly familiar, because of cours
e they are. The time you have left seems insubstantial suddenly, a peculiar daydream fantasy. Vivid while you were having it but, like most dreams, irretrievable on waking.
* * *
There was a man who lived next door to us when we were children whose house was stuffed to the rafters with old radios. The type he liked best were the wooden console models from before the war, but he kept Bakelite sets too, and those tinny little transistors from the nineteen fifties. His main obsession was a hefty wooden box full of burnt-out circuits and coils he claimed had once belonged to a wireless set used by the French Resistance in World War Two. He was forever trying to restore the thing but I think there were pieces missing and so far as I know he never got it working again.
I used to spend hours round at his house, going through the boxes of junk and watching what he was doing. Our mother couldn’t stand Gary Tonkes. She would have stopped me having anything to do with him if she could. Looking back on it now I believe she thought there was something peculiar about his interest in me, but there was never anything like that, nothing you could point a finger at, anyway. When I was thirteen, Gary Tonkes was sectioned under the Mental Health Act. His house was infested with rats, and he kept insisting that one of his radios had started picking up signals from Mars. I remember taking pictures of the house afterwards with the Kodak Instamatic Uncle Henry had given me for my tenth birthday, pretending I was working for MI5. I still feel bad about that. I think now that Gary Tonkes’s radio might have been picking up not signals from Mars, but the voices of people who had lived in the house before him, or who would live there in the future, after he’d gone.
Time doesn’t give a damn about the laws of physics. It does what it wants.
* * *
I think of Helen’s basement living room in Camden, the ancient Aubusson carpet faded to a dusty monochrome, the books, the burnt-orange scent of chrysanthemums. I sometimes wish I could go back there, just to see it again, but I know I can’t. I’ve had my turn. And stealing more time could be dangerous, not just for me and for Helen but for you as well.