Reparation

by Gaby Koppel

  I can’t imagine a baby surviving inside me now. It would seem like an earthquake for her. And after the earthquake, the tsunami. I can feel a large, gelatinous bulk slide into my pants, and as it does so, the pains begin to subside. A feeling of disgust overwhelms me and I try to drag off my underwear, to get the fearsome, disgusting, alien mass away from me. I’m scrambling up the bed, dragging and ripping at it, just as the sharp sound of metal rings swishing along the curtain pole announce the arrival of the doctor.

  A confusing swirl of images, mixed through with the white glare of ceiling lights. And breaking through it all, a familiar face in a white coat is looking at me, with an expression of shock and concern. I can’t quite focus on who it is. Don’t care.

  “Something’s come out, it’s come out. Get it away,” I shriek.

  “Lie down, just relax and let us do this,” he says, pressing me back onto the bed, and shouting out, “Nurse! Now!” The nurse appears in moments, and holds me round the shoulders while the doctor eases my knickers down with latex-gloved hands. He wraps the thing into a large piece torn from the roll of sterile blue paper, and leaves the cubicle with it. The memory of it coming out plays over and over again in my mind. I’m shaking and shouting, and pushing it away even though I know it’s gone really, but it feels as though it’s still there. The rational side of my mind can’t take control and stop me juddering and scrambling back along the bed.

  “It’s OK, it’s gone. Stay still.” I can feel the nurse holding me down, and the sharp prick of an injection. Bit by bit, the shaking stops, and the replayed sensations grind to slo-mo and then a freeze frame. Even with the fluorescent lights piercing my eyelids, I can feel my breathing and pulse subside, and I must drift off. I don’t know how long I’m out for. The nurse shakes me.

  “I’ve got a cup of tea for you here, if you feel up to it.” I’m still trembling, so she holds it and lets me sip the hot, sweet liquid until I’m calm enough to grasp it myself. Another swish of the curtains and the doctor is back. Recognition kicks in. It’s Jon. With a stethoscope. I jerk with surprise and spill some of the tea on the surgical gown I seem to be wearing. He puts out a hand to steady me, and helps me hold the cup level.

  “How are you feeling?”

  I shrug but don’t manage to say anything, because I’m shocked how lovely he is, and how pleased I am to see him. I scrutinise his face for the arrogance I saw there before.

  “So you are a doctor then,” I say.

  “Yes, sorry about that.”

  “No, I didn’t mean – it’s OK, it’s fine. It’s good.” He smiles a disarmingly charming smile.

  “And in my medical capacity there is one good thing I can tell you. You won’t need to have any further surgery.”

  “I suppose that’s something.”

  “But it might take a day or two before you are back to normal.” He’s folded his arms, with one hand on his chin and a worried look.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,” I say. “Bit of a shock. Is there something else you wanted to say?” He looks embarrassed.

  “Nurse, would you give me a moment, please?” She nods and steps through the curtains. He sits down on the bed next to me. “I do need to ask you something,” he whispers. “Were you – um? When we, I mean… am I just jumping to conclusions when I wonder? ”

  “I’m sorry, this is going to sound very irresponsible,” I say. “But I don’t know.”

  “What exactly don’t you know? Were you pregnant before – when we…?”

  “Oh, no. At least I don’t think so. I only realised a few days ago.”

  “So who is the…?”

  “That’s it. I don’t know.” I’m bracing myself for him to be judgemental, with every possible justification.

  “So,” he says. “It is possible?” And he points to himself.

  “Possible that it was yours? Yes. But it’s not what it looks like.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Well, as though I’m… What I mean is – there is one other person. Possibly.”

  “I see.” He nods. “The hapless goyishe photographer?”

  “Yes.” I expect him to say something nasty. But he doesn’t. He just stands there looking at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I should have got in touch.”

  “Would have been nice and all. Even if I was only in with a fifty-fifty.”

  “Are you trying to say that you would have wanted me to have your baby?” His redness intensifies, and I’m sure I’m not imagining that I can make out a certain wetness in his eyes.

  “Look, forget about it.” He turns to go, then seems to have second thoughts. “This is all totally unethical, and I’ll probably get struck off if anybody finds out, but can I give you a call later on? Maybe we could have that coffee?”

  Chapter 30

  Mutti’s shocked to see what a state I’m in when I get back home. She wants me to go to the doctor’s although I assure her there is nothing whatever wrong that a couple more painkillers, a cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits won’t fix. She knows I’m lying. Not one of those casual lies I tell every day about where I’ve been and who I’ve been with, but a big huge massive lie that I’m telling myself as well as her. That I don’t care. That it’s for the better. That it wasn’t really a proper baby yet, just a bunch of cells.

  Of course it wasn’t just a bunch of cells. And now that it’s gone, I realise for the first time how curious I am…was…about the baby and whether I’d be any good at all as a mother. But now I’m gripped by a terror that I’ll never, ever be able to get pregnant again. After all, I deserve to pay the price for being such an idiot.

  Mutti knows all this without asking. She doesn’t want me to talk about how I feel, just wraps me in a big fluffy blanket and sits there holding my hand. The following day she’s still treating me like an invalid. She’s even phoned work on my behalf. I don’t protest.

  We’ve got an unspoken pact not to discuss the broken window and what is now an unsettling series of silent phone calls, because it spooks us out. I need to find out what was in that scribbled Hebrew note, and the best hope for that has to be Morrie, but I haven’t got the energy to call him now. I’m hoping that the new arrest for Bruchi’s murder will have sorted the problem, but when Mutti’s not about I can’t help stealing the occasional furtive glance out of the window. And I’m screening my calls again. I really will have to talk to Jenkins. When I’m ready. For now, I lie back on sofa while Mutti fixes foul smelling herbal tea that must have been in the cupboard for years. I’m sniffing the steam rising from the cup when there’s a ring on the doorbell.

  “Are you expecting someone?” she asks, pressing the intercom. We look at each other, and in that instant I regret not calling Jenkins. I most certainly am not expecting anyone. Who on earth is it?

  “Delivery ma’am.” I haul myself up and go to the speaker.

  “Have you got ID?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But first, you might want to take a look out the front.” There’s a van on the kerb inscribed with the logo SINCLAIR SPECIALIST DELIVERY, and then in smaller letters underneath “Transport you can trust”. I open the door to find a man in blue overalls.

  “Miss Mueller?”

  “I haven’t ordered anything.”

  “Larry mate,” he calls out. “Young lady says she hasn’t ordered anything. Check the docket, will you?”

  “Look,” I say, “I’m sure it’s a mistake. Do you want to come back when you’ve sorted it out? I’m really not up to this today.”

  “It’ll only take a minute, Miss. Hang on.” As he says that, the driver gets out of the van, holding a clipboard, the edge of its paperwork fluttering in the breeze.

  “Nope, mate, it’s all kosher. I spoke to Ed, and it’s the right place.” I’m still musing on the fact that he’s got no idea at all what “kosher” really means, when he rolls up the back of the van. The two men start unloading a picture covered in many layers of bubble wrap.

>   “Where do you want them, Miss?”

  Mutti’s gone back to her crosswords. She gets to her feet when she sees the men in overalls coming into the room carrying a substantial canvas.

  “Bring it here. On the sofa.”

  “I don’t advise putting an artwork on the sofa, Madam. How about the table?”

  “Ja, good. Put it down.” He lays the painting flat. Mutti starts fumbling at the bubble wrap with shaking hands.

  “Hold on now, madam. That’s no way to handle an oil painting. Do you want me to remove the packaging?” She nods. He takes out a Stanley knife, and neatly snips the sellotape on the package. Layer after layer falls away, until the gold frame pokes out of the wrapping. Then the painting itself emerges. It’s the woman next to the table, with the bowl of fruit. Mutti groans.

  By the time the men have finished, there’s a row of pictures of different sizes, arranged in a careful row along the wall of the lounge, still in their bubble wrap. As he puts down the last one, the delivery man asks me to sign a document on his clipboard. He unclips an envelope from underneath it and gives it to me. It’s heavy, laid paper, the kind you get in old-fashioned stationery shops. Mutti’s name is written in elegant handwriting on the front, by someone who uses an expensive fountain pen. I look round, but she’s not there. I find her on the balcony, breathing heavily and swaying.

  When I give her the letter, she just looks at it as though she’s forgotten how to read. So I open it for her. The card is headed ANDRIS KOVÁCS in small, square black embossed capitals. The content is brief. No “dear” anybody, not even “For the attention of”. But in the middle of the page are the words,

  I know ‘sorry’ doesn’t really cover it. Kindest regards, Andris.

  When the men have driven off in their delivery truck, we sit on the bench together, watching the darkness eat up the back garden. Rush hour traffic grumbles on Camden Road. We’ve left the paintings in the front room still swathed in their layers of wrapping while we enjoy this moment of calm. One by one, lights come on in neighbouring flats, as their owners return from office, studio and workshop. Whirring, banging and grinding tell us that kitchens have come to life once more. And discordant chorus of voices chatter and hum from televisions, radios and CDs.

  “Don’t you want to have a look at the rest of them?” I ask. Mutti looks surprised.

  “Ja, why not?”

  We unpick the bubble wrap, bit by bit, dropping layer upon layer onto the floor. As the last piece drops away, a curlicued gold frame emerges, and finally the canvas itself. A magnificent likeness of a lady, looking as though it dates from the mid-nineteenth century. The regal blue gown is corseted at the waist, skirts spread over a vast crinoline, with silk fabric looking soft enough to touch, each fold and scallop catching the light in a different way. Mutti nods.

  We unwrap the next and the next. There are landscapes and portraits, interiors and still life, like a potted history of the styles and techniques of European art through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – impressionist, expressionist, and even one abstract. A nod to Picasso there, to Degas there. After we’ve looked at them all, we carefully replace the bubble wrap, and leave them stacked against the wall.

  “They probably aren’t worth anything, anyway,” I say to Mutti.

  “No,” says Mutti. “Nothing at all.”

  “But there’s a lot of sentimental value.”

  “Ja,” says Mutti. “Very much sentimental value.” And she flicks a long pillar of ash into the ashtray.

  When I catch up with Jenkins, he tells me that they’ve arrested a man called Germaine Jones. He was working for a local estate agent.

  “He was just the guy who went round putting up the For Sale signs. He had a heap of them in an old white minibus.” I gasp.

  “I saw him!”

  “You didn’t say anything. When?”

  “Well I had no idea – I mean I didn’t suspect… It was the very first day I came up to Stamford Hill to have a nose around. I’d gone into an estate agent to see if I could get any information about the area, and that bloke was bodging about there, coming and going. It must have been him.”

  “I bet you didn’t give him a second thought.”

  “Not one. He was just in the background. But how did you work it out? I don’t remember him being on your list of possible suspects.” Jenkins looks momentarily embarrassed. Hardly surprising if there’s stuff they don’t want to – or can’t share, I suppose.

  “In the end, the white van was the clue. You think there are dozens of them in the area, but each of them criss-crosses the same streets a couple of times a day, so you think there are far more than there really are. It wasn’t all that difficult to track them down, and that was it, really.”

  “So no real link to the community, nothing sinister there?”

  “Just opportunity, I imagine.”

  I congratulate DI Jenkins, and we shake hands. I’d like to give him a hug, but that would be unprofessional in the extreme. Walking out of the station into “Stokey” High Street, it’s still going round in my head. It was just some regular guy. Well, a regular weirdo anyway. That’s real. Not like a TV drama where the killer turns out to be one of the cast members who you’ve already been ploddingly introduced to, and whose motive is suddenly revealed by a clever twist of the plot. But this is real life. You couldn’t have guessed. There was no conspiracy. Just one of those awful things that happen, and Bruchi was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, stupid bloody cliché that it is.

  Chapter 31

  The following week I’m out in Leicester, directing my film. Let’s say that again, I’m directing a film. The armourer is scarier than his guns, and the actors really do ask me about their motivation. I don’t get a minute’s sleep in my hotel bed, because I’m so busy working out my shot lists for day two. Despite exhaustion, I manage to stumble towards the wrap and Bill says he’s sure it’s all in the can, “Well done, kid.”

  Six months later, I find time to slip in to the opening of Dave’s new show. He’s found this little gallery space in Stoke Newington for his photographs of the Hasidic community. It’s a little shop front. Where the greengrocer used to sell cabbages and carrots from stands covered in artificial grass, they’ve painted the walls brilliant white. The stills are set on cream mounts in aluminium frames, several of which bear little red stickers meaning they’ve been sold. There are a handful of frummers there, and the kind of arty crowd Dave’s always hung out with. It’s perfect synthesis of both the worlds that he inhabits now.

  I told him about the miscarriage, and about Jon, as soon as I could. That’s not why we split up though. Well, not the only reason. He tells me about the classes he’s doing, and the way he manages to fit daily religious observance round his work. And as he walks away, I notice the white tassels hanging down from under his shirt. It’s not for me, it’s for him.

  Mutti has moved back in to her house in Rhiwbina. When she’s had time to settle in, I go to visit. As the engine stills, I catch some faint notes of violin music floating in the atmosphere. I open the car door, and sit listening. Street sounds, a front door banging closed, birdsong and the distant bark of a lawn mower. Then a rising arpeggio cuts through the static, a fragile wisp of a thing, clinging on to the air. I think that’s Mendelssohn’s violin concerto. Can’t be Mutti, surely? It stops, and then starts again, repeating a phrase several times, before sweeping on. But she hasn’t got an instrument.

  I let myself into the house, and the playing gets louder. Coming from upstairs. Then it’s suddenly interrupted by a noise from the kitchen. The staccato whirring of an electric mixer, in short compulsive bursts. I find Mutti at the Kenwood, surrounded by flour, butter and piles of rich yellow apricots.

  “Who’s playing the violin?” I ask, as she kisses me hello.

  “I’m making B&B. I told you.”

  “Yes, yes, Mrs Llewellyn is helping you with the advert. You told me, but that doesn’t explain the music.”
>
  “She tells me special place for advert, WNO.”

  “What is WNO?

  “You know. Welsh National.”

  “Welsh National what?”

  “Opera. What you think? Opera!”

  “But don’t their musicians have a home already?”

  “Guest artistes for violin section.” She scrapes cake mixture off the side of the bowl with a large red spatula, and sweeps a fingerful into her mouth.

  “Mmm delicious. Needs drop of vanilla. Must practise four hours a day.” As she bustles into the larder, there are footsteps on the stairs, and a young man with a blond beard appears.

  “Hi, I’m Hugo.” I shake his hand as gently as I can. I don’t want to be the person who mangles his virtuosity.

  “Can I help with something, Mrs M?” he asks as Mutti emerges from the larder.

  Hugo and I lay the table together for late lunch, as he has a performance tonight. Mutti insists on an embroidered tablecloth that was part of her trousseau. While she is kneading the galuskas, and fine-slicing the cucumbers, she begs him to bring down his instrument. He demurs. Mutti begs him.

  “Please. Would make me so happy.”

  He says, “Look, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I must think of my performance.” And I think, oh no, let’s not be responsible for ruining tonight’s recital. Let alone tomorrow’s. Think of all the people who have paid exorbitant sums for tickets. Can this man really withstand the rigours of Mutti’s hospitality? Let’s hope she doesn’t decide he needs a spot of arm-wrestling as a warm up. But he suddenly caves in, “OK, OK,” and I realise it’s an elaborate game they’ve been playing with each other.