by Olivia Fane
‘So what are you saying?’
‘The heart ought not to be unfolded.’
‘“Ought” not to be?’
‘You can’t break it down and analyse it. It is as it is. And you ought not to break it down. And the truth is, you won’t break it down.’
‘What do you mean by “the heart”?’
‘There’s nothing to be said about it. The heart just is. A description of it can only scrape the surface of it. A description of it can even alter it, that’s how sensitive the heart is.’
‘Who the hell have you been talking to?’
Josiah didn’t answer her, but Elspeth knew. Now she wished she’d read the file.
For the rest of the journey they said nothing to each other. Josiah opened the glove compartment and tried on Elspeth’s sunglasses. He looked through her selection of tapes: Billie Holliday, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon. He pulled out the ashtray. It was crammed full with cigarette butts. Somehow, Elspeth felt ashamed.
They passed a sign to Caldicott. ‘It’s a couple of miles up from here,’ said Josiah.
Elspeth drove on. She looked at her watch. It was five to four. Fuck, she thought.
‘Okay, you can park here,’ said Josiah suddenly.
‘Here? What, in this lay-by? A crime in a lay-by?’ Elspeth laughed nervously.
‘It’s about a ten minute walk from here, perhaps fifteen,’ said Josiah.
‘It’s too dark, Josiah.’
‘It’s not dark!’ insisted Josiah. ‘You don’t know what dark is! But you’re right, we need to get a move on.’
Josiah jumped out of the car and slammed the door. He rolled down the sleeves of his shirt. ‘Do you mind if I borrow that blanket on your back seat?’
‘If you don’t mind dog hairs.’
‘Do you have a dog?’
‘I walk my neighbour’s at weekends.’
‘You should come out here sometimes. The last remaining hills near Cambridge.’
‘You mean, you managed to find a hill?’
Josiah wrapped the blanket round his shoulders.
‘You look like Superman in that,’ Elspeth said.
‘Then you must trust me. Let’s go.’
There was something about Josiah which made her follow him. They walked together, perhaps as far as a mile.
‘What exactly was it you set fire to?’ asked Elspeth.
‘Hay. And the hay set fire to the building containing the hay.’
‘Are you disclaiming responsibility, Josiah?’
‘Oh no. I had the box of matches. The hay didn’t know what it was doing.’
‘Why did you set fire to the hay, Josiah?’
‘Fire is beautiful and wild and free; the most creative, the most destructive force in the universe. I wanted to sit on the hill and watch it. Of course, the barn’s not in such good shape now, but where I’m going to take you is the place I sat down to watch.’
‘This is going to be a wild goose chase, I can tell.’
‘Far from it. I’m going to take you to the place where I felt… that’s all I need to say. Where I felt. Where, if ghosts exist, my ghost would be. I can tell you the date, however. It was the first of August.’
‘And why do you remember the date so well?’
‘The first of anything is memorable, isn’t it?’
‘It’s getting cold, Josiah.’
‘Here, come under the blanket with me.’ Josiah didn’t put it as a question, but wrapped a half of it round Elspeth’s shoulders. There was a moment when Elspeth considered resisting. She could have said, ‘Look, it’s dark and cold and I don’t know who you are and you’re frightening me and I want to go back home now.’ But she didn’t. She let him put the blanket on her, she was even grateful for it. And suddenly she couldn’t be bothered to work out quite how dark it would be, and whether they’d be able to find their route back. It was, perhaps, how people feel when they are drowning. Suddenly they no longer need to master their fate, but surrender to it.
The first of anything is memorable. They sat down together on the cold grass and huddled under that blanket together for a long time, as if it were a secret den away from the world. Josiah kissed her cheek and told her she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. It was so private, that place. Under that blanket, the gutted structure of the barn faintly visible under a new moon, there were no boundaries, not even the boundaries of words, to separate them. Such was the pleasure of kissing her yielding mouth that a full hour passed before Josiah’s hand ventured to her nubuck boot, and upwards to her thigh, and his fingers dared to explore all that was in his possession. He knew he was master of her; Elspeth knew it too.
At nine o’clock that evening they stumbled down the black path together towards the main road and the patient Gertie. On the way back into Cambridge Josiah put on the Billie Holliday tape. They said nothing to each other: the more private a place you share with another, the more private a place you return to. They were at the traffic lights on Lensfield Road.
‘So, where shall I take you?’ asked Elspeth.
‘Your place,’ answered Josiah.
Elspeth was rapidly learning how to be obedient. Sometimes, there is no alternative.
Josiah left Elspeth’s flat in North Cambridge before she woke up, and the first thing Elspeth did when she saw the empty space beside her was to retch into her loo. She wasn’t sick, but if she could have sicked up the whole of the last twenty-hours she would have done. The wine didn’t help either; Josiah had refused even a glass of it, while he watched her humiliate herself by drinking a whole bottle of the stuff before midnight. It was 7 am on a Saturday morning: normally it was her favourite moment of the week; she would take a novel and a cup of tea back to bed with her, put on a CD, muse, enjoy. But today she couldn’t sit still; she showered, changed her bed linen, mopped the kitchen floor, polished her windows. Then at half past eight she rang her neighbour and told her she’s be walking that day, a great marathon walk, she said, and would Rusty like to join her? Rusty would, said the neighbour; but while Elspeth straightened out the blanket on the back seat of her car, she was overcome by that same sickness, and even more to her chagrin, desire.
By the Sunday night she’d walked thirty miles, but her feelings, whatever those feelings were, were stronger than ever. She laid out her clothes for the following morning: no more nubuck boots, her skimpy shirts stayed resolutely on their hangers, and out of her wardrobe came the dark and sombre suit she’d bought from Next for her job interview and had never worn again. She was determined to repent; she considered handing on Josiah’s Probation Order to a colleague, with the explanation that her caseload was already too large. She considered writing Josiah a letter of apology. Apology! Sometimes things were too big, apologies were too small. But by the following Friday she had done nothing. The inevitable telephone call happened. Josiah was in reception. He was coming up.
Elspeth stood up to meet him. Even Josiah’s act of closing the door was somehow suggestive. The room suddenly became a secret place; Elspeth remembered the sensation of the blanket being thrown over her.
‘Hi,’ she said.
Josiah looked at her intently, curiously. And you can’t read a face that’s reading yours. Elspeth couldn’t understand how she needed to behave, and there were no clues in Josiah’s face to guide her. If this was a game, Josiah won it.
He said, ‘You look unhappy.’
‘I am,’ she said.
‘Please don’t be,’ said Josiah, with feeling.
‘Look at me,’ said Elspeth, sitting down at her desk, ‘I’m having a cigarette.’ Her fingers were shaking; she lit it and inhaled deeply. ‘Sit down, goddammit,’ she said.
Josiah took the chair and moved it so that it was exactly adjacent to hers. He then sat down beside her and put his hand on her knee. When she didn’t resist, but carried on smoking as though nothing had happened, he gently pulled up her skirt just a fraction, and began to stroke her.
Then suddenly
Elspeth got up and said to Josiah, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
They quickly learned how to use that three o’clock appointment to their advantage. By the following week, they had both got into their stride. Josiah would come in; Elspeth would say something like, ‘So, Josiah, have you been good this week? Confess your sins, boy!’
And Josiah would reply, ‘I met a woman. She led me astray.’
‘You have to learn self-control!’ Elspeth would reprimand.
‘But she is so beautiful!’ Josiah would insist, gazing at her openly, honestly.
And after this little game, those two would be quiet for a while, and they found, to their surprise, that not touching was quite as erotic as touching.
And then they would drive back to the flat together, leap into bed until supper, and after eating and sharing a bottle of wine, return even more voraciously to their adult play-pen. On Saturdays and Sundays there was more of the same, punctuated by walks with Rusty, and thermos flasks of tea on windy hills. And really, nothing more should have been demanded of those two. The problems come when people try to shift the natural perimeters of a relationship, and when one or other begins to look for more.
That one or other was Elspeth. If her first fear had been too much too soon, and the fear of being caught, of losing her job, or simply, or doing a morally suspect thing in sleeping with her client, this was replaced by a fear that Josiah was hiding something from her, did not fully trust her with the truth. Two months on, not only did Elspeth have no idea why Josiah had set fire to the barn – he had a way of making arson seem quite normal – but he had never spoken to her about his involvement with the paedophile, who was now in prison on account of it, nor had he told her about his parents, or what he remembered about them, or how he had come to be taken into care. She had never wanted to force it, for when her questions were too pressing, he would deflect them. He would say, ‘Sometimes, you know, you sound just like a Probation Officer.’
The bottom line was, Josiah could not love her as much as she loved him, and her whole instinct, and indeed training, told her that his behaviour was typical of someone whose emotions had been ‘blocked’ by some trauma. At first she imagined this was his experience at the hands of ‘that man’, as she referred to him, but he had calmly told her that he hadn’t laid a finger on him and, quite honestly, he shouldn’t even be in prison. ‘There’s nothing more to say about Thomas,’ he insisted one Saturday morning as they lay in bed together. ‘He was kind, generous, good, the best man I’ve ever known, really.’
‘Then why is he in prison? The courts don’t normally fuck up.’
‘A thought crime. A crisis of conscience. He confessed to something he didn’t even do.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Then you’re like ninety-nine percent of the population,’ said Josiah.
But Elspeth had one extraordinary advantage over the rest of humanity in her pursuit of the perfect relationship. Namely, she had files. She could legally access files as far back as Josiah’s birth.
Josiah’s Social Enquiry Report written for his trial had been extremely sympathetic. Josiah’s life story had been tragic: his mother had run off when he was barely seven; his father had been a mental patient. After a series of failed foster placements, he had settled well both into his school and The Hollies, a residential children’s home. Since his involvement with a paedophile, however, things had gone dramatically downhill. He had not been to school or been gainfully employed since July 1999. The offence had taken place a year later. Josiah, the report concluded, should not be given a custodial sentence despite the seriousness of the crime.
‘That sheds light on nothing,’ thought Elspeth to herself. ‘A year is too long a gap. Something else is going on in that boy’s head.’
So she found out that the senior social worker involved in Josiah’s case had been a Ms June Briggs, and she fixed an appointment to see her. They met in Ms Brigg’s office. She explained, at their interview, that she found it difficult to get through to the boy.
June laughed. ‘You’re not the first who’s found that. I knew his mother. I fear genetics are at play here, she was quite impossible too.’
‘Do you know what happened to her?’
‘I think she ended up in Spain or Italy or somewhere like that.’
‘So she’s not dead, at least.’
‘She might be now, for all I know.’
‘So how does anyone know where she went, even approximately? Did anyone ever go out to look for her? Some concerned relation?’
‘I’m afraid she didn’t even have many of those. Eve’s mother was pretty frightful too, as far as I remember.’
‘Was she also a client of yours?’
‘Thank God, she wasn’t.’
‘So you really have known Josiah since he was a baby?’
‘Only too well.’
Elspeth feigned a professional interest; her love and pity for the boy were overwhelming her.
‘So what was Josiah like as a young child? Did you know his father, too?’
‘That was what was so strange,’ said Ms Briggs. ‘Josiah’s mother was an extremely vivacious, attractive woman, I’ll grant you that, and she married this large silent man, more than thirty years her senior, called Gibson. I mean, he seemed harmless enough – you are staying to read the files, aren’t you? You’ll see for yourself. I don’t think our social workers ever managed to have a single conversation with him. But he was a gentle sort, at least, and more responsible, certainly, than his wife.’
‘So tell me about Josiah’s mother. Eve, is that her name?’
‘Yes, Eve.’ Ms Briggs smiled. ‘Eve rather lived up to her name. The first woman, she always had to be first, she always had to be right. That might even have been the one reason she married Gibson, to spite her mother. You can imagine quite how much she approved of the match.’
‘But are you saying Eve’s mother actually cared about who she married? That’s a start isn’t it?’
‘She was an ogre and a half, Eve’s mother. She also needed to be in charge. And Josiah does, too, don’t you find? None of that family have ever had the… humility to heed advice, or to accept help.’
‘So you thrust it upon them.’ They were badly chosen words. Elspeth bit her lip, and attempted a look of humility herself. She ignored the expression on Ms Briggs’ face which said, ‘So are you one of us, or one of them?’ and continued, ‘So I want to know about Eve.’
‘Elspeth, that is your name, Elspeth? You enter deep water when you concern yourself with that family. Luckily, we have only Josiah to contend with, but he’s some can of worms, I can tell you. It didn’t surprise me when he set fire to that barn. It’s exactly the kind of thing his mother might have done. In fact, I seem to remember that she did set fire to something. It wasn’t serious, it didn’t come to court. When you read the file you’ll tell me, won’t you? In fact, you’ll be able to remind me of a few things. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it, DNA. They only lived together seven years. Arson wasn’t a learnt behaviour; rather, there’s some cluster of genes that say to each other, “Let’s destroy!”
‘I’m not sure how much I believe in genetics.’
‘There speaks a good student! I suppose you have to believe in people being able to change, otherwise what’s the point in being in our trade? But I’ve been a senior social worker here for twenty years. I’m retiring soon. And every year, I’m afraid, I become increasingly cynical. We can’t make people better than they are. We can’t make people better parents. We can’t make people kinder. Or less self-centred. I simply despair at what humanity is. One huge, self-serving mess, no part of which holds together with any other part. Love your neighbour! That’ll be the day, Elspeth.’
They looked at each other for a while, and each surveyed the other with pity.
‘How much disillusion lies in store for this young, pretty enthusiast!’ thought June Briggs.
‘How bitter, how twisted, how unhap
py this middle-aged woman is! And she should dye her hair!’ thought Elspeth.
Elspeth stood up to go. ‘About those files,’ she said.
Ms Briggs didn’t even look up at her. She was playing with the end of her pen. The spring had broken.
‘Ask Marie at reception,’ she said. ‘She’s got them ready for you.’
Elspeth was shown into an empty interview room; she was offered tea, which she accepted, and after a few minutes, a small tray with tea and biscuits arrived, along with three fat files. She didn’t even open them for ten minutes, but sat there, catatonic, licking the chocolate off a digestive biscuit as a child might. Then she braced herself.
The first entry was in March 1984. Josiah was still a six-month-old foetus in his mother’s womb. They don’t miss much, thought Elspeth. Eager beavers, these social workers. It was a photocopy of the minutes of a case conference held at Fulbright Hospital. It had been given the title Aftercare Proposals for Gibson Nelson and Eve de Selincourt, and Elspeth scanned the list of people present: Dr Tim Aggs, Dr Michael Fothering, Patricia de Selincourt (presumably Eve’s mother, Elspeth surmised), Alison Streetly, Laura Jones (student), Janet Holloway, and June Briggs: there she is, in the story right from the beginning.
Elspeth was not thorough: her curiosity drove her onwards and onwards, faster and faster, and June was right, there was barely any mention of Eve’s husband, Gibson. He was featured as this large weight, harmless, hovering in the background. It was Eve that confounded them all, it was Eve that no one could bear.
Again and again, Eve did not co-operate, she read. Eve did not behave appropriately. Josiah walked in half way through the interview. He was covered in mud. Eve didn’t respond; she didn’t seem to realise he might need her. Eve was dressed in the saffron robes of a Buddhist. It’s possible Eve might be acting as a prostitute. Eve is absent again. Gibson doesn’t seem to know where she is. Eve had no interest in looking around the local schools for her son. Eve refuses to send her child to school. There is no evidence that Josiah is receiving an education at home. Eve is obstructive. Eve is rude. Eve has an irritating laugh. Eve always thinks she knows best.