by Guy Bolton
But still, tomorrow’s headlines meant nothing to Craine anymore. He was done with it all. Finished.
The driveway leading up to his house was so packed with parked police cars it reminded him of the parties they use to throw there when he and Celia were younger and happier. As he pulled up outside the front door he half-expected to see Celia waving with a glass of champagne in one hand, but it was his secretary Elaine who appeared in the doorway. She looked forlorn yet exceptionally young in the halo of the porch light. He wondered what she dreamed of at night. Who dreams of being a policeman’s secretary? He hoped she found whatever it was she wanted from life. She still had time.
He turned off the ignition and sat unmoving in the silence. Raindrops appeared on the windshield, or was it the early morning dew? He couldn’t be sure. It had rained plenty in May and he wanted it to rain again now. Wash it all away so he could start afresh. He didn’t expect bow-tied endings; he knew there would be no catharsis but with so much loss it seemed there could be nothing else but a new beginning, in whatever form that might take. His life was moving in a new direction, but he was no longer afraid. It was thinking of his son that pushed him through. I have been saved from myself with your help, Michael. I have discovered unknown strength. Everything that has happened these past few days has made me realize that I’ve taken you for granted for too long. There is only one act left.
Inside the house, police officers moved in and out of hallways recovering ammunition. Except for the boot prints, the house had been cleaned and tidied as best as uniformed officers knew how. They are men with wives and families, and their efforts are touching, Craine thought. The house was still in ruins, of course, but it made no difference. He had already decided he would sell it. There was no reason not to.
Craine’s eyes were caught and held by Elaine’s. She looked like she was about to cry. “Where is Michael?” he asked before she could.
“He’s in bed.”
“Thank you, Elaine. Go home and get some rest. You don’t have to go into work tomorrow.”
“I’m so sorry—”
“Thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Elaine left the house and the uniformed officers went with her. Craine heard the closing of car doors and the turning over of engines, the cars driving off one by one through the weeping night until only two squad cars and an unmarked F.B.I. coupe remained parked outside.
The house was empty, and Craine wandered through the dark corridors until he came to Celia’s bedroom—no, his own bedroom.
Michael was lying in the center of the bed, his tiny body hidden beneath thick sheets, his head nestled in the pillow. The room was dark except for the light coming from the bathroom. The door was open and he could see the floor was wet. A heavy towel was folded neatly on a chair beside the bathtub, Michael’s undershirt and socks draped over the towel rack. It looked like a normal bathroom; it was no longer Celia’s mausoleum.
Craine sat at the edge of the bed and Michael stirred. He didn’t have to look at him to know he was awake. He opened his mouth to speak but no sound came out. The words were stuck in his throat and he had to breathe for a few seconds and wait for his jaw to stop shaking.
In the driveway, under the shadow of a willow tree, a small police light flickered on and off. He’d forgotten that you could see the driveway from here. It had been so long since he’d been in this room. Months. Over half a year. When he was younger, Michael used to come running in here at the weekends, crawling onto the bed and slipping under the sheets. Craine had always told Celia off afterward, said that a boy should learn to stay in his own bed, but he’d never put a stop to it. Michael seemed to enjoy it so much. Besides, the three of them were a family. It was something he’d taken for granted but not something he’d forgotten: that even if fatherhood hadn’t come naturally to him, having a family was the single best thing that had ever happened to him. And just because Celia wasn’t around anymore, it didn’t mean they had to stop being one.
“I never told you much about my father,” he began. “I didn’t know him very well. He was a hard man, kept himself to himself mostly and in many ways we’re similar, I suppose. He died, my mother too, when I was about your age.”
He thought for a long time about that. About the strange idea it was to be someone’s father. About the way in which he’d struggled to live up to his responsibilities. If I have ever been given an opportunity to change that then it is now. If not now, then never again. Maybe there’s no saving me. But there’s a life I’ve created that can live on. I can be the bridge.
He took a shallow breath, knowing that if it was any deeper the tears would come and he wouldn’t be able to finish. “I don’t think about him much these days, but I wish I’d had a chance to know him. Sometimes I find it hard to remember what he looked like but I’ve seen pictures of me and him when I was a boy, and I know he looked a lot like I do now. You may be surprised, but I looked like you back then. I always said you looked like your mother, but when I see that picture I know I only wish you did. You look like me.”
He looked down at Michael. His eyes were open, what light there was in the darkness reflected in the brown circling his pupils. “When your mother died I know it was you that found her. We never talked about that. I know that you’ve felt you should have saved her. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you. And I made it worse, not better.” He stopped speaking until he could form the words he’d failed to say so many times. His face was growing hot and there was a small out breath as he tried to stop his voice from breaking.
“I went away because I was ashamed of what I’d become. Not because I blamed you.” As he spoke, everything that had happened seemed to rise up in his chest and the tears that had sat for so long inside of him made their way to his eyes, resting there for a long time before slowly subsiding.
“You weren’t responsible,” he went on, delivering the confession he should have given many months ago. “It wasn’t your fault. I should have told you that. And I should never have left you. I was selfish, and I wanted to be something I wasn’t. I’d forgotten about what was important. About being a father. About you. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything you’ve gone through.”
His lungs felt so small and shallow, barely able to take in the air he needed to keep his composure. “But now there’s only us left, and I have to take care of you. I know that now.”
He placed his hand out on the bed sheets and another hand, the same hand in smaller form, came next to it. There is a place for us that isn’t here, he told himself. We shouldn’t stay in this house just because she was. There has to be a place for us that can have new memories. Through his mind ran all the possibilities of where and how, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that he’d already made his decision. “I want us to find a house, a new house we can call home. I want you to live with me and we can start again.”
His hand moved over Michael’s and he held it tight. “I don’t know what will happen after that, but that doesn’t matter because I’ll never leave you again. I promise you, I’ll never leave you again. We have each other now, and that should be enough.” He took a deep breath and said finally, “I hope I can be enough.”
He didn’t look at Michael again, standing up to leave without saying another word. He wasn’t quite at the door when a voice said, “Good night, Papa.”
It was only three words, but when Craine moved back into the depths of the living room, he clung to them, a life raft he needed to hold onto.
Opposite, on the far wall, the photograph of Michael sat crooked above the fireplace, a survivor in the wreckage of their house. Jonathan Craine took a seat on the divan and stared at it for a long time before his breathing settled, his heart steadied and his eyelids drew together with pictures of a better life.
He slept.
Acknowledgements
The Pictures is a testament to the help of a great many individuals. It’s always an absolute pleasure to work with
intelligent, insightful and passionate people and in all three respects I’ve been incredibly lucky.
I would like to start by thanking my editor Jenny Parrott and the brilliant team at Oneworld. I couldn’t have asked for a better publisher.
Thanks also to Sean Gascoine, Georgina Gordon-Smith and Hania Elkington, for picking me out of nowhere, pointing me in the right direction and giving me the encouragement to get there.
I want to thank Mark Bolton, for introducing me to far better writers than I’ll ever be. I owe a lot to John le Carré, Graham Greene and Martin Cruz Smith, who in their own way became my creative writing teachers. It’s difficult to write a detective story set in pre-war California without also mentioning Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler. These authors created the sandpit that I’ve gleefully been playing in and without them, The Pictures simply wouldn’t exist.
A special thank you to my literary agent Anna Power, who saw potential in my manuscript, championed this novel and worked so hard to make it the best it could be. You helped make The Pictures possible.
Lastly, I’m deeply grateful to my family, my friends and to Harriet Smith, without whose support this book would never have been written.
A Point Blank Book
First published in North America, Great Britain and Australia by
Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld Publications, 2017
This ebook published by Point Blank, an imprint
of Oneworld Publications, 2017
Copyright © Guy Bolton 2017
The moral right of Guy Bolton to be identified as the
Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78607-039-5
ISBN 978-1-78607-040-1 (eBook)
Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses,
organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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