by Paul Butler
By the time we’re stepping down the polished metal steps into the milling chaos of the platform, my heart is pounding. I touch Mrs. Jenson on the shoulder, and she turns to me, her eyes clear and trusting with the hint of appeal in the sudden contraction of the irises. I wonder if I have the courage after all.
“I’ll take Lucy to the bathroom, Mrs. Jenson.”
Aware of a strain in my voice, and of something missing—a meeting point would have made sense, I realize—I make sure to await her response. She doesn’t seem to take it in at first, and I feel as though I must have babbled in some foreign tongue.
“Yes,” she says, distracted by a porter. “Yes, you should. Meet me outside.”
I stoop and take Lucy’s limp hand. She turns slowly, but not reluctantly, the foot of her rag doll in her mouth. My imagination spins forward in time, to the gap in the fence beside platform 1 where I have seen boys without tickets evade railway security, to Mrs. Jenson standing at the station entrance, glancing nervously at her silver watch, to Lucy and I scurrying down the street towards the town centre, merging with shoppers and merchants’ boys, or perhaps hiding in the station cafeteria until the Norwich-London express roars in for its three-minute pause. Then, veiled by puffs of steam, shielded from Mrs. Jenson’s view by trunks and yelling porters, we are climbing aboard in the first stage of a great act of transformation, emerging on the other side of our journey into a true world of childhood with games, rhymes, and bedtime stories that weave their way into happy dreams and uninterrupted sleep.
But at my second step, Mrs. Jenson calls.
“Stop, Elsa. I’ll take Lucy.”
She descends upon us like a great moth and, fluttering in quiet agitation, directs a nervous, desperate smile at her daughter, easing the rag doll’s foot out of her mouth. Then she turns with a soft, helpless look towards me. “I’ll take Lucy,” she merely repeats, and I can’t help but be moved by the ache in her voice. Allowing the child’s hand to fall from mine, I suppress a swirl of threatening tears.
Mrs. Jenson leads her daughter off, stooping all the way, whispering some unheeded endearments to her child. They disappear behind the red-brick recess that hides the station washrooms.
I stand upon the concrete, lost and squinting against the sun, wondering for whom the helpless water of grief is rising. Is it for the mother who cannot protect or for the woman who cannot bring herself to mother? Or am I holding back tears for the child whose youth has drained from her, apparently unnoticed and certainly unchecked? My attempt—thwarted, thank God—was insane, monstrous. Even as sentiments sway inside me, my heart is pounding with relief at my own narrow escape—such desperate, terrifying folly.
I, myself, am an engine out of control. But knowing this does not help in the least. The chilled water of self-awareness merely adds steam to my fire, adding both unpredictability and an agonizing detachment. I know that when the dam breaks again, that when I next jump in front of a moving object, or try to steal another woman’s child, I will experience the exquisite horror of observing myself as an onlooker might observe me. It’s as though helplessness is a disease and after seven years of feeling helpless over the lives and deaths of others, I am infected. Now I am helpless over myself.
CHAPTER 26
Simon
Below, the factory floor is quiet at last. The men must have gone on their morning break.
Up until a few moments ago, every scrape of palette against concrete was like an eruption in my skull. Several times, I thought of leaving, only to be held here like a prisoner by the dread of my workers’ curious glances, by the terrible sense of failure that must come from returning to the open air, and by this pounding head and the multitude of fears it spawns—fear of the sun, fear of reflections, fear of sudden noises.
Coombs knocked only once, and then even more timidly than usual, to tell me about a shipment of horses’ hides. His eyes and mouth were a quiver of disquiet, and he clearly knew something was up. I have not seen a mirror, but I know I must look quite brutal. I told him I was ill and he seemed rather relieved. I suppose it didn’t occur to him that I could be lying, that I’m hardly going to admit to drunkenness, nightmares, and marital difficulties. What would he think if he had witnessed me earlier this morning, trying to gain entry to the Salvation Army hostel, then wandering the docks in search of a man-sized crevice in the grime-encrusted maze of factory buildings, or a safe, secluded place on the quay where something could be secretly offloaded? What would he think if he had seen me return to the corner nearest the hostel, waiting and watching as the men spilled from the doorway into the street? A masochistic urge wants to blow the illusion away and let everyone who works for me stare upon the obscenity that happens to be the truth. But this impulse is merely the need to be free from myself, to crawl out of my own husk, to allow others to spit and throw stones while I ease myself away to a different reality. Perhaps I’m a great deal less complicated than I like to believe, or perhaps it is merely the headache from which I crave escape. My imagination has enlarged my grotesque behaviour, giving it tragic proportions it does not deserve. This second explanation, once encountered, seems the most likely: I am so crass, so simple, that a cessation of all physical pain will instantly return me to equilibrium. Once the headache clears, I will pick up my pen, issue orders, and take up my duties afresh.
There’s a thud on the staircase below, followed by a creak. The break in the silence is as unwelcome as it is unexpected. A glance at the grandfather clock confirms that the men have been gone less than five minutes and should not return for another five. The sound repeats—clop, creak, thud—a combination of movements that seems at once careful and clumsy, slow yet determined, as of someone trying to negotiate the first few stairs with a heavy weight on his shoulder. I sigh at the prospect of another of Coombs’s timorous entries, this time no doubt with a sample of leather and a question that he is probably more qualified to answer than I.
The noise follows upon itself immediately. The climber, it seems, is gaining momentum as he ascends. I stare at the clock again as though appealing against this intrusion. The position of the black hands, indicating five past nine, the minute hand just beginning to bulge the line angling down from the figure 1, seems ominous suddenly, a warning that order has somehow gone awry.
The next cluster of movements—a knock, thud, scrape, and creak—is much closer this time. Whoever approaches has reached the top of the open staircase. My stomach, which has been steadily churning with whisky-induced nausea all morning, has stilled, and my headache unexpectedly lifts. The knocks and thuds—they are too irregular to be called foot–steps—are on a level with the office now, and getting louder.
With lightning-flash clarity, the realization strikes. I know who it is. The knowledge, once gained, cannot be lost, however much I might wish to lose it. Meeting Smith now, face-to-face, in the seclusion of my own office—the deepest recess of my private territory—is unthinkable, the idea simply beyond endurance. I was fired by a kind of courage when, accompanied by the rising sun, I drove into town. But with each failure to connect with my prey, each rising notch of sobriety, the lizard of cowardice crawled a little farther from its hideout. Each man who emerged crutch-less from the hostel door brought greater relief and smaller disappointment. Now my hands grasp the desk rim in front of me. My muscles and sinews stiffen. This time he has found me and I am far from ready.
I fix on the door’s empty keyhole. The dark shape, two inches or so in length—tiny head, narrow neck, long rectangular trunk—mocks my eyes. There is a key, but I’m not sure where it’s kept. Perhaps it’s downstairs in Coombs’s office, perhaps in the drawer of my own desk, but I haven’t time to search. My vision spins to the open window. There is no fire escape and I calculate the drop at ten yards. I’m on my feet by the time a single knock sounds. I can hear soft gasps and grunts on the other side of the door. It must be an effort to balance on crutches while knocking. The noises—human, fallible—seem to reduce the threat, at leas
t slightly. So he has found me before I could find him. The advantage is still mine. He must have heard I was searching.
“Come.” My voice is strained but commanding enough, I suspect, to the hearer.
The handle turns and the door comes open only a few inches. Then, after a slumping sound, the base of a crutch comes into view, its rubber sinking into my worn carpet. Then there appears a black shoe and the hem of a trouser leg, charcoal in hue and sagging above the turn-up. The door opens wide to reveal a man who, even though my mind has been steadily projecting images of a face essentially the same as the one before me, I still barely recognize. The hollow cheeks, the aquiline nose—slightly misaligned just as it was before July 1916—the pronounced chin, and the thin lips all conform to my memory of Private Smith. But something is so different that I am momentarily drained of all fear, deluded temporarily into thinking that this meeting is our first, that knowledge of no prior crime can be retained by a figure so profoundly unfamiliar to me.
He is even thinner than before, and his hair, obscured in memory because of the ever-present helmet, is different from how I imagined, sparse and hanging close to the scalp like young ferns upon a rocky barren. A tentative widow’s peak ventures down his forehead. It makes him seem more sensitive.Although I find his frailness calming, it’s something else that successfully breaks the thread connecting present to past. It’s in his expression, an uncertain movement around those thin lips and the hint of indecision about the eyes. Such softness never dwelt in my recollections of his dying smirk. In my imagination Smith has always been a creature of acute angles, sharp edges. He is the twist of metal that intrudes upon comfort and punctures all sentiment. The change confounds me. If he were here for any other reason than blackmail, one would almost have called this broken man gentle.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says, leaning heavily on one crutch. “You’re not so easy to find.” A self-conscious smile passes over his face and, perched like a queen ant upon four unmoving legs, he remains just inside the doorway.
“But I hear you found my daughter and that you managed to speak to her.” I mean this to be a warning, a grenade to smoke out the lowest intentions, but my voice does not carry enough aggression and sounds too friendly.
His face registers a pleasant surprise.
“Yes, a sweet girl. Most children fear me.”
The skin on my face burns and the heat spreads like a fever down my neck, flooding across my shoulders. Fear: he has named the word, the theme of this meeting. I sense a code unravelling. Fear seven years ago, the fear of a coward about to turn murderer. Fear now, the fear of a man whose true nature is about to be revealed to all and sundry. In a few more exchanges, the idea of money will be brought up, perhaps obliquely, through some reference to insurance or purchasing security.
My dislike of Smith has returned now, finding a white-hot focus in the ghost of a smirk now hovering over his mouth. He has become that mean animal again, insinuating his way into the core of my discomfort. His smallness is no longer an excuse. I want to swat him like a fly.
“Why?” I ask. “Why have you been looking for me?”
The question drains the timid smile from his lips. He looks concerned, and shifts painfully, causing something to creak, either a crutch or a wooden leg.
“It’s difficult to express,” he murmurs, eyes searching the carpet. He glances up at me and a nervous grin passes across his face, descending into something like an appeal. He passes his right hand through the hollow V of his crutch’s upper portion. He sways, balancing, dipping the hand into the pocket of his jacket, drawing out a letter. “So difficult to express, I put it in writing.” He gives the letter a mock-whimsical smile then transfers the same look to me.
So this is how it’s done, I think: an allusion to the shameful secret then the sudden appearance of a prop, in this case a letter. He doesn’t want to send it, he’ll say. He’s been trying to find a way to avoid having it delivered, but beggars can’t be choosers. He wonders whether it might be to our mutual advantage to come to some kind of arrangement.
Although nausea swirls inside me, it’s almost a relief to get to this stage. This is the enemy I’ve been dreading all these years. This is the secret that’s been consuming me. And the scale of disaster seems curiously reduced and rather prosaic; just two men standing awkwardly in an office. Do your worst, the words from last night, repeat in my brain. I think of how I might phrase this in a manner that conforms to the code: I am already insured, thank you, or I’ll take my chances, but I’m distracted by a scuffing noise on the stairs and a series of soft footfalls. Someone, perhaps more than one person, is climbing towards us. Now I’ve an urgent need to get this man from my office. In the theatre I’ve witnessed scenes in which the third party is drawn in by the blackmailer to play an innocent role in a three-way exchange, always to the excruciating discomfort of the blackmailer’s victim.
“I don’t want to read your letter,” I say. “Please leave my office.”
It’s the moment of truth, the moment when I’m most likely to receive the threat directly. A boulder of sickness heaves inside me, tugging at every wiry nerve. I have to bend and grip the desk for support. But the unexpected happens. Smith’s head begins to turn, one crutch skimming along the carpet, the other sinking anchor-like into its depths. The letter still flaps like a dead seagull from his fingers as his shoulders dip in revolution. The lifeless feet turn, sliding, dragging, towards the open door.
Was there some threat upon his face that I missed, some glimmer of triumph to come? His expression on turning was one of deep regret, as though the plans upon which he must embark are painful to him as well as me. Are all blackmailers so compassionate towards their victims? Or is Smith just a remarkably good actor?
The crutches, the baggy charcoal suit, the ghostly white of the letter, the thin hands with their pronounced blue veins, move into the dim light beyond the doorway, and apart from the crook of an elbow, disappear from view, as he manages to partly close the door behind him.
Then there comes a voice so bizarrely out of place in the setting that I believe Smith must be a ventriloquist and that his sad exit is merely the comedic faux-pathos before the delivery of a killer punchline. “It’s Mr. Smith!” are the words that come in the unmistakable voice of my daughter, Lucy.
CHAPTER 27
Sarah
The sight of the young veteran, so easily recognizable from Elsa’s description, floods me with sudden hope. His thin, sensitive face and his delicate frame are like rays of sunlight through storm clouds parting. Lucy’s greeting—unguarded, joyful—merely confirms a sense that his visit to my husband is somehow vital to his reclamation. The fact that Mr. Smith smiles happily at Lucy as he adjusts his crutches and prepares to descend the staircase proves that Simon must have received him cordially. Where his hand grips the crutch support there flaps a letter. Could this be terms of his employment, or perhaps a reference to be presented at some other, more suitable workplace? The door behind Mr. Smith is not quite closed, another indication of ease and normality. The happy flutter between the veteran and my daughter, who reaches the landing just ahead of Elsa and I, is contagious. So Elsa was right after all, and in more respects than she knew. The physically broken and the mentally crushed meet like pieces in a jigsaw, promising to mend the ugly rent which has for so long marred our sky.
Why so sure? The question spins through me as I reach the upper floor and hold to the unvarnished banister for support. The voice warns of overtiredness and stress, the strange heady feeling that has followed me from the station. While the three of us walked the river footpath to the tannery, I basked in the incongruous sunlight, feeling all manner of lost emotions, joy in the rolling green waters, vicarious anticipation at the widening banks that would be met downstream by waves, by the oncoming mixture of freshwater and brine, and finally the stirring of North Sea breezes.
I recognize the superstitious weave of my thoughts and I know my vulnerability. I can too eas
ily fall victim to unreasonable hope. But there is convergence of circumstances now, as neatly patterned and symmetrical as a snow crystal: our own desperate make-or-break journey into Ipswich; my decision to bring Lucy—an intuition against common sense, as all true intuitions must by definition be; my illogical faith in this step into the unknown; and perhaps, most striking of all, the knowledge that this is indeed the darkest hour and therefore by definition has to be followed by a dawn. The old truism must come through now that it is most needed. Despised and cursed, no doubt, by all for whom it has failed, the saying must earn its keep now or lose the currency it has enjoyed through the ages.
“How nice to see you again, Mr. Smith,” says Elsa, her voice subdued, as always, as though wishing not to be overheard, yet incorporating a depth of sincerity.
“We’ve been walking by the river,” interrupts Lucy, “watching the geese.” The ease of this little group, Lucy’s return to the simplicity of childhood, and the chance, however slight, that any moment Simon might join us, transformed into his former pre-war self, makes me giddy and sentimental. I half-turn for a second to warn away the blur of tears.
“Everyone should be outside, enjoying nature on a day like this,” Mr. Smith says. I’m struck by the soft melancholy of his voice, the way it merges into my own more hopeful mood as purple and violet might merge on a painter’s palette.
“Would you take Tommy, Mr. Smith?” Lucy says, handing her rag doll to the veteran. “He’s sick.”
“If he’s sick, Lucy, he should be with someone kind like you,” he replies, stooping as far as he can on his crutches, slender fingers touching the toy briefly but not taking possession. “Actually, I was going to ask if you’d do something for me.”
“What?” asks Lucy, snapping eagerly to attention and saluting. Mr. Smith glances at Elsa first, then at me. His look communicates compassion and pain in equal measure, and I suddenly wonder how much he knows about us.