by Penny Feeny
‘Did you know about Tom Farrelly?’ she said.
‘What about him?’ Was she referring to his child, Clementine? For certain she had caused a stir.
‘He’s been in a road accident.’
‘Ah no, I’ve heard nothing.’
She slumped against her car as if her legs couldn’t support her weight, even though she was so slight. She didn’t seem bothered about the drenching. ‘I think that was my fault too,’ she said.
PART SIX
MAY
Saturday
28
The Investigation
Smoke still rose from the debris of the garage. Its back section no longer existed, its contents were a heap of ash and twisted metal and most of the roof had caved in. Glass had exploded out of the window frame with the force of the heat. Half a dozen charred and ruined canvases were stacked against a wall. Matt had offered to take Friday off work (even though he had papers to clear before the bank holiday) but Rachael insisted it wasn’t necessary. So it wasn’t until Saturday morning that he could properly consider the position.
He used to be proud of his ability to keep things in proportion, stay sanguine, but this had waned over the past thirty-six hours. His tolerance dropped another few notches when he stumbled out of the bathroom after his morning shower, to find his wife bending to fasten the buttons of Leo’s shirt, her knuckles brushing his chest. Leo stood at ease against the banisters, his arms slightly raised. Rachael’s hair fell across her face as her fingers moved downwards, as she fed his belt through the loops of his jeans and struggled with the buckle.
‘I can see to that,’ Matt said quickly, knocking her out of the way, wanting to spare her the indignity of acting like a maidservant.
Leo couldn’t do anything for himself. His hands and forearms were swathed in white gauze so they looked like the paws of a giant dog, a St Bernard, say, clumsy and shaggy. He could just about manage to drink from a cup, cushioning it between his bandages, but he couldn’t manipulate smaller utensils: comb, cutlery, mobile phone. He couldn’t push a button through a hole.
He was lucky to be alive. He’d been dragging the third smouldering canvas onto the lawn at almost the exact moment that Matt opened the main garage door. Within seconds of the key turning in the car’s ignition had come the crackle and leap of flames – a sound like rushing water – but this hadn’t stopped him dashing into the inferno again. It was too late for Matt to do anything but steer the car to a safe distance. Then he had leapt out, raced to the back of the garage and plunged after Leo.
Leo was taller, but Matt was well built, with the physical energy of a much younger man. He had seized his stepfather beneath his armpits and tussled him to the ground, rolling him on the grass until Rachael brought out a blanket. Subsequently, the firemen had both praised Matt for his bravery and admonished him for his foolhardiness.
‘I could do with a shave,’ Leo said now.
‘I’ll help you later,’ said Matt, thinking that stubble had never bothered him before. ‘You can wait till after breakfast, can’t you?’
He needed an early dose of caffeine, an energy boost to set him up for the rest of the day. He liked his coffee dark and heaped several spoonfuls into the cafetière. Rachael joined him with Danny. Dan had been both thrilled and terrified by the scale of the fire, the arrival of the fire engine and the power of the water jets dousing the flames. He couldn’t wait to go to school, to tell the story to his class, but he’d woken screaming in the night and this morning was pale and withdrawn. He had to be coaxed to eat his Shreddies.
Danny’s fragile mood was eclipsed by Leo’s. He shuffled into the kitchen in a pair of old moccasins and sat at the head of the table, filling the room with his bitterness. He laid his arms out in front of him and stared as if they were detachable appendages and he had no idea what to do with them. Matt poured the coffee and made a stack of toast.
Leo glowered at the toast until Rachael took the hint, spread a slice with butter and held it up for him to bite into. Matt saw her mopping the melted butter as it ran down Leo’s chin and felt his anger surge again. To see his wife’s compassion directed towards his son was heart-warming – but not, for pity’s sake, towards Leo. He was visibly softening at the shimmer of Rachael’s touch; as if in gratitude his knee jogged hers beneath the table.
Danny pushed his half-eaten cereal aside and slipped off his chair.
‘Are you sure you’ve had enough, darling?’ said Rachael.
In different circumstances Matt might have cajoled him to finish the bowl (and with more success, he suspected, than Rachael) but he watched his son trot out of the door and upstairs to the haven of his playroom, without attempting to call him back. He could still hear, in his head, Danny’s agonised refrain – on and off for the past two days – ‘It wasn’t my fault!’
‘He’s a bag of nerves,’ he said. ‘I spent most of last night trying to explain he couldn’t be held responsible.’
‘Well, someone started the blaze,’ said Leo sourly. ‘It wasn’t an accident.’
‘They did warn me,’ said Rachael, who had distributed her Chelsea buns to the firemen while Matt took Leo to A&E for treatment, ‘that we might not get a pay-out if the insurance company think it was fraud.’
‘So they’re suggesting I set fire to my own paintings? Yes, I would do that, wouldn’t I? Easier than trying to flog the buggers.’
Leo’s paintings in their heyday had sold well: the larger ones to institutions, hotels, hospitals, banks; the smaller ones to private collectors. He’d check the auction catalogues from time to time and be pleased to find his value rising, declaring to Julia: ‘I told you I’d be a good investment.’ But this heyday was past and the great public art galleries had never shown much interest in him. One work, selected as a John Moores’ prizewinner, was stored somewhere in the vaults of the Walker Art Gallery, but hadn’t been exhibited for years.
Matt said, ‘They didn’t belong to you anyway. Technically the garage and everything in it is ours. We’re the ones who need to get the claim in. Besides, if that were the case, why would you have nearly killed yourself trying to salvage them?’
Leo grimaced. ‘You know it took years of my life to get them right? Not that anyone gives a shit about the art once it’s become a fucking commodity. I shouldn’t have bothered.’
No, thought Matt, you shouldn’t.
‘No one’s accusing you,’ said Rachael. ‘Any more than Danny. You were upstairs in the attic. We know who struck the match. Nathan. His sister was supposed to be keeping an eye on him but she was useless, wasn’t she? She even looked like she was enjoying the drama. After it was over, she actually asked if the police would want to talk to her. I couldn’t decide if she was just being naïve or…’
‘The girl’s sharp as a tack,’ said Matt.
‘Then she’s the one we should put pressure on. D’you know where she lives?’
‘I know the street they’re lodging in. She hangs around the corner waiting to waylay me when I’m coming back from the station. A couple of times now. I could try and find her, flush them out.’
‘I don’t see what good it will do,’ muttered Leo. ‘The damage is done.’
‘I’ll go right away,’ said Matt, downing the rest of his coffee and rising to his feet. He felt galvanised, ready for action. He wanted to get out of the house.
Rachael followed him into the hallway. ‘You could take Danny with you,’ she said. ‘Shame them into telling the truth.’ She shuddered. ‘Oh, Matt, imagine how awful it might have been!’
‘I’d rather not,’ he said. ‘It’ll be easier to get to the bottom of what happened if I go by myself.’ He didn’t need his son pulling at his sleeve and looking miserable, or sprinting ahead in a bid to win a race. Besides, he didn’t want to leave Rachael alone with Leo. ‘In the meantime, don’t—’
‘What?’
‘You’re not his skivvy.’
‘Fuck, Matt! I wasn’t the one who wanted Leo to hang on her
e. That was your doing!’
‘Actually this is because of Bel and Julia. We just happened to get caught in the slipstream. Let’s not argue about it.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Was there anything else you should have told me about yesterday?’
She gave a little gulp and twisted her hair around her forefinger. ‘What do you mean: about yesterday?’
‘When you drove him to the clinic to get his dressings changed. Which was very good of you, I thought.’
‘Oh well… I don’t know any more than you. I didn’t go in with him, I waited outside.’
‘Why take him then? He could have called a cab.’
‘I hadn’t anything else on.’ She tugged at the twist of hair. ‘And I felt responsible for making you take down his paintings. If we’d left them on the walls this might not have happened.’
This was true, but he said generously, ‘If it hadn’t been for the barbecue, he wouldn’t have known they were in the garage in the first place.’
Danny’s frail cry came from upstairs. ‘Daddy, can you help me?’
‘If you deal with him,’ Matt said, ‘I’ll get going before he attaches himself to me like a rug rat.’
He grabbed the nearest jacket from a peg in the hall and marched out of the door and along the road. He felt strung-up, wrung-out, an unusual experience for an equable man. His response to most events was cautious and considered but today, despite the balmy air of the first of May, the lavish sprinkling of cherry blossom, he longed to knock the stuffing out of somebody. An empty beer can rolled at his feet and he kicked it some distance into the gutter.
He drew his phone from his pocket. He had received a text yesterday from Bel, saying only: We’ve decided to stay on for a bit. He had replied: Good idea, and left it at that. No point in adding to complications. She’d obviously ignored his advice not to go to the party, but he assumed the encounter had gone well. At some point he would have to tell her about the fire, about Leo’s injuries, the possibility that he could never paint again. Was it worth the two of them discussing what the hell they might do with their parents? It wouldn’t be the first time. Despite their age difference he and Bel had always presented a united front and agreed on parental shortcomings. But no, at this stage he couldn’t face it.
He was close to tracking down his quarry. He was in a street lined with red-brick terraced houses, each with a low wall separating its narrow frontage from the neighbours and the pavement. Youths raced past him on their bikes but none were Nathan; he was such an odd, friendless boy. Wouldn’t most kids his age hang out in a gang with a football or spend their free time on warring computer games? Why was he battening on to a five-year-old?
Two women stood smoking over a wheelie bin. They had a proprietary air, as if they were long-term residents. They would notice incomers.
‘Hi there,’ Matt addressed them. ‘I’m looking for a family who moved here a week or so ago. A grandmother with two kids?’
They looked at him blankly.
‘I can’t remember their surname,’ he went on, though he’d never been told it. ‘But the girl and boy are Kelly and Nathan. Dark hair, skinny. She’s about fourteen; he’s ten or something.’
‘Kids everywhere, love,’ said one of the women as a skateboard whizzed past.
He tried again. ‘Do you get a lot of comings and goings in this street? Do many of the houses belong to private landlords?’
The other woman stubbed out her cigarette with a twist of her heel. ‘You could try them two at the end,’ she said. ‘Them bigger ones. They’re in flats. Different tenants all the time.’
‘Thanks, that’s very helpful.’
As he walked on he heard her say defensively to her friend, ‘Can’t be no bailiff if he don’t know their name.’
Fuck, he thought crossly. Was it because of the jacket he was wearing? Did he really look like a bailiff? The day was pleasantly warm so he took it off and slung it over his shoulder.
When he reached the dilapidated pair of carved-up semis with their peeling window frames, he was prepared to ring every one of the doorbells tacked onto the board in the porch. But he didn’t need to. Kelly leaned out of a window above his head.
‘I’m coming down,’ she said.
She appeared on the step but didn’t let him in. She shut the door behind her and sat on the brick wall, mouth in motion. He wondered if she ever stopped chewing gum.
‘Were you expecting me?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘How is he?’
‘Who?’ For a moment he thought she meant Danny.
‘Your dad.’
‘Oh, not great. He might have to have a skin graft.’
‘For real?’
‘They don’t know yet. They have to see how the burns heal. His dexterity could be affected.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘He might not be able to use his hands properly.’
‘Why’d he do it?’
‘Because he didn’t want to lose his work.’
‘We lost everything,’ Kelly said.
Everything. He hadn’t forgotten what she’d said, that first time she’d dropped in on them. It was one of the reasons he’d encouraged Dan to be generous with his toys: because Nathan had none. He’d even said to Rachael, thinking of a future sibling: ‘Where’s the harm? It’s good for kids to learn to share.’
‘I want you to tell me what happened,’ he said to Kelly, ‘when you used to live with your mother. Was that when you had the fire?’
‘Not with Mum.’ She tucked her arm into the crook of his and he didn’t pull away, he didn’t want to alienate her. ‘It was after we moved in with Nan. It was Nan’s place what went up.’
He kept his voice low, non-committal. ‘Was that Nathan’s doing too?’
She pushed the gum into her cheek and screwed up her nose. ‘Might of been one of Nan’s fag ends. Plus she had these old chairs they’re not s’posed to sell any more ’cos of the stuffing. So it spread dead fast.’
‘I bet she had something to say when you and your brother came back looking like scarecrows.’ The fire had not threatened the children. They’d stood well back with eyes aglow as if they were celebrating Bonfire Night, unfazed by the destruction.
‘She weren’t in. She were on shift.’
Matt was used to dealing people who chose to be economical with the truth. They’d say, ‘It’s like this, mate…’ and spout a long convoluted story with great gaping holes in it. And he’d point out that he could help them better if some of these holes were filled in, that he was on their side whatever, but if he was going to represent their interests it was best that he knew the facts. Not everybody came round to his way of thinking though and he suspected that Kelly had ‘contrary’ written all the way through her like a stick of rock.
‘You do realise,’ he said now, ‘that what we’re talking about – setting fire to things – is a serious offence.’
‘Nan shouldn’t smoke anyhow. It’s bad for her asthma.’
‘You try to keep Nathan under control, don’t you? It can’t be easy for you.’
‘We didn’t do nothing.’
‘You know what an ASBO is?’
‘Course I fucking do.’
‘Has Nathan ever had one?’
She squirmed closer to him. ‘No.’
‘Well there’s always a first time.’
‘He in’t old enough.’
‘Then maybe he’ll get taken into care.’ He remembered her questioning him about her father’s responsibilities; how he’d explained that he wasn’t a family lawyer.
‘They won’t sort him out. No way.’
‘Things must have been tough since your mum died. It would explain him going off the rails.’
‘Oh no,’ said Kelly blithely. ‘He’s always been like this. Friggin’ mental. There was a doctor once, not the GP, did some tests and stuff on him. Listened to what he had to say and wrote a report. It was supposed to get him some help, but dunno what happened to it. Nath probab
ly ripped it up.’
‘How would he have got hold of it?’
She nudged him in the ribs. ‘I’m kidding yous. Didn’t make no difference anyhow. Soon after, we went to live with Nan and he changed schools.’
‘And now you’ve moved again.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So does he go to school at all?’
‘Holidays, innit?’
‘You know it’s not. Danny went back two weeks ago. And what about you?’
‘I’m year nine, aren’t I? Secondary school. It’s different.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘It’s Saturday.’
‘Yes, I know that.’
‘So he can be where he wants. Right?’
He wouldn’t let her aggravate him. He could see she was trying to protect the boy. In his own youth he’d had that same sense of obligation; he’d looked out for Bel because she had a knack of not recognising danger.
In the summer holidays she used to go to the local adventure playground. Once, when he was sent to collect her, he found she’d strayed with a gang of kids onto the bank of the railway line. They were daring each other to swing from overhanging branches or tear up and down the tracks. Bel was performing cartwheels. Her legs scissored through the air and a shoe fell off; as it landed on the line they heard the rumble of an approaching train. She righted herself swiftly but he was close enough to see her hesitate over the fate of the shoe.
‘Leave it!’ he’d yelled.
Because she’d turned at the sound of his voice, she’d lost the chance to snatch back the shoe. It was crushed into a mangled strip of leather as the train rolled serenely past. ‘They were new!’ she’d wailed at him. ‘What am I going to tell Mum?’ They’d invented a tale of a friend’s dog who had a habit of burying things. Bel assured Julia the shoe would reappear. She assured Matt she would in future execute handstands and cartwheels in safer places. The responsibility, the need to check on her, never entirely left him.
‘You can’t look out for Nathan all the time, though, can you?’ he said to Kelly. ‘You can’t follow him everywhere. Stop him causing bother. The fact is, our garage looks like a bomb’s dropped. We’re going to have to get it fixed up. And someone has to pay for it.’