by Alice Jolly
But then Vladimir comes and stands near the door, looking me up and down. ‘But we are always needing more copies.’ He speaks to me in Spanish and I explain about the college. And so it is agreed. But even as we say goodbye, and go down in the lift, I can feel Rob’s disapproval. In the car he starts to tell me that I shouldn’t photocopy anything. ‘You’ll get yourself into trouble, Eva. You shouldn’t even be working. You don’t have a proper visa.’ We’ve had this conversation before and I know how it goes. We don’t need the money. You don’t understand the risk. That boss of yours – he’s a complete crook. Blah-blah.
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but that’s exactly the point. Because Mr Baloni is frightened of the authorities he’s hardly going to report me for not having a visa, is he?’ Usually I get worried by this kind of conversation, and try to change the subject, but now I just insist that I’m going to do what I want.
When we get back to the flat, Rob turns on the television and disappears into the bedroom. Tomorrow he’s going to Kiev for three days and he’s got to pack. I sit on the bed although I sense he doesn’t want me there. Rob and I have never really had an argument before. I wonder now if the girl behind the cardboard cut-outs actually likes to argue. ‘Have you seen this scarf?’ I say. ‘Maya gave it to me.’
Rob gives a vague nod in the direction of the scarf while making it clear that he doesn’t have time to bother with scarves.
‘It was interesting, actually. Talking to Maya.’
‘Oh yes? Why? What did she say?’
‘Nothing special. I just asked her a few things. Sometimes I’m curious about things in the past, aren’t you?’
Rob is laying out shirts and socks, and a jacket. ‘No, not really. I mean, of course, you and I come from a fucked-up family. My mum is dead, your dad cleared off to Mexico. But so what? The great thing about the past is that it’s past.’
Of course he would think that. He’s the man of action, the man who believes in the future, and I’m the silly little girl who sits around asking existential questions. Except that now I’m fed up with apologizing for the way I am. I’ve got a right to ask what I like. That’s what Jack says.
‘I’m not sure we really need the Montezuma Mystery all over again, do we?’ Rob says. That’s a reference to some childhood game I can’t even remember. When Rob mentions that, I’m meant to laugh and admit that I’ve got quite a capacity for conspiracy theories, and inventing mysteries which don’t exist.
‘I mean, you understand that, don’t you, Eva?’ Rob says. I nod and move back into the sitting room. That phrase is used so often in our relationship – you understand. And I’ve always thought we say that because, having known each other since childhood, there’s not much need for us to talk. But now I doubt whether either of us really understands anything at all. And I start to wonder vaguely how relationships end. How did my father finish up leaving for Mexico? Did he just spend more and more time in London with Maya? Or did my mother come home to find a note on the kitchen table, and the wardrobe half-empty?
On television there’s a South American soap opera dubbed into Russian. I recognize it from when I lived in Lima. Suddenly I long to be back there – living in a room on my own, in a country full of colour and light, a place where I could at least understand the language. I find a pad of writing paper and sit down in the black swivel armchair with it resting on my knee. I’m going to write to my father, that’s what I’m going to do. I haven’t got his address but I can get it when I go home at Christmas.
The piece of paper is large and empty. No words arrive to take possession of it. I thought I had questions to ask but now I can’t remember what they were. I put the point of the pen on to the paper and a black circle spreads around it. I look through to the bedroom and see Rob standing by the bed. Perhaps he was right. What exactly was the question?
In the attic bedroom the child stands at the window and watches rain gurgle in the gutter below. The branches of trees roll in the wind and the drive is thick with fallen leaves. A car pulls in through the gate and Father James appears in his black mackintosh, flapping towards the house like a crow. The child hears Rob’s voice and goes to sit beside him as he opens the tin trunk which came from under her mother’s bed. It contains maps, and ships’ time-tables from 1912 printed on fragile paper. Black-and-white photographs in an album show men sitting on horses in front of a white church with a bell-tower. Other photographs show stone carvings of monsters with eight arms, and pyramids covered in thick jungle. A book tells the story of Hernan Cortés and the conquistadores, of the Aztec priest and ruler, Montezuma.
All the things that are in that box are clues to solving a mystery. Some months ago, an Aztec princess was taken hostage by the conquistadores who’ve come to conquer Mexico. They’ve hidden her deep in the jungle and no one can find her. But now that the children have got this box, they’ll be able to find out who kidnapped her, and follow their route into the jungle. The child loves this story. Even the words are exciting – Montezuma, conquistadores, Aztec.
Rob takes a map from the box, explaining that this will help them plan their journey. This room used to belong to the child’s father when he was a boy. Above them, model aeroplanes hang from beams by invisible threads. A rag doll with a sagging head and black woollen hair sits on the mantelpiece. The grate is full of pine-cones, and on the windowsill there’s a transparent dome which you can shake to make the snow fly around, and inside it two figures skate, their arms linked.
The child is happy because Rob has come to stay for the whole of his half-term. His parents were meant to come back from Rhodesia but then they couldn’t make it. All most upsetting and disappointing, her mother says. Such a shame they couldn’t come. The situation in Rhodesia is so difficult at the moment. The child repeats these words but secretly she’s glad they didn’t come.
Rob’s finger moves over the map. Their journey through the jungle will be fraught with danger – snakes, caimans, conquistadores, and a lake full of piranhas. An army will be needed, so Rob lines up plastic soldiers on the floor. These soldiers will need tents to sleep in so the child hangs sheets between the beds. But there are too many soldiers and only one sheet, so she goes down to her bedroom to strip her bed. As she enters the bedroom, with its pink rocking-horse wallpaper, she hears her mother’s footsteps rattle across the tiled floor below.
She turns back and stares down into the hall. Father James is speaking, his voice deliberately calm. Her hands curl over the rounded spindles of the banister. Words rustle upwards, and she cranes her neck, trying to hear. Amnesia-cat-teaser-amnesia-cat-teaser. Her father is on the phone again. He’s been calling people for the last three days, and banging the doors open and shut. Once he was even on the telephone when everyone else was asleep in bed. More words she can’t hear. Glove-misting-dove-hissing? She moves closer to the top of the stairs. Rob is behind her. He’s found a biscuit tin which makes an Indian drum. Bang, bang, bang. He marches the child back upstairs. Glove-misting-dove-hissing? You must put your foot down exactly at the moment when the drum bangs.
Rob looks at the map again and they’ve reached the piranha lake. It stretches across the whole floor of the room and they’ll have to get around it, there’s no other way. They jump from bed to bed, then climb over the bedside table onto the chest of drawers. The child follows Rob, as they practise the journey again and again. It’s easy to bounce from one bed to another, to wobble along the back of the chest of drawers. But each time the child swings down from the top of the glass-fronted cabinet to the armchair, she nearly slips. And she feels the piranha close to the surface, waiting for her to fall. They can eat every bit of your flesh in less than a minute, and only your bones are left.
The rain has stopped and Rob says that they need to go to the farm. Mr Reynolds, the farmer, is one of the conquistadores and he was involved in the kidnapping. In his office there’s a cupboard with a gun in it, and a bag with a red stain hangs on the door. They take a magnifying glass and a pot of flour
to dust for fingerprints. As the child leaves the house, her father is talking on the phone, and he grips the receiver so hard that his hands are white.
In the farmyard they spy on Mr Reynolds round his office door. They need him to leave so that they can investigate that bag further, but he stays where he is, writing figures in a book, so they stick their hands through the bars where the cows are and feel sandpaper tongues nuzzling over their fingers. As they sneak back towards Mr Reynolds’s office, he suddenly appears. They dash for the tractor shed, but he’s seen them. They hear him shouting, but just in time, Rob finds a door at the back of the shed which leads out into the lane. They dive into the woods opposite and hide deep in the trees. And there they find more clues – symbols carved into the trunk of a tree, pleas for help from the captive princess. And a campfire and pieces of soggy bread. The princess is somewhere not far away, and Mr Reynolds is holding her captive.
When they come out of the wood, the sky has turned the colour of pewter and the rain comes down in gusts. They need to get some supplies and make a camp for the night. Tomorrow they’ll start their search again. They set off for home, passing the entrance to Wyvelston Hall and the gate which leads through the pinewoods to the house. As they pass the boatyard, a car pulls out of the gate and they run and hide in the laurel hedges which line the drive.
When they open the door to the house, everything is silent. The telephone doesn’t ring, the doors don’t open and shut. None of the lights are on and the child wonders if her parents have gone out. But they wouldn’t have done that. In the kitchen the table is empty. For the last few days no one has cooked sausages, or fish fingers, or scrambled eggs, but sandwiches have always been left on the table.
The child listens. Someone is in the house. A tiny, tight sound, like a mouse scraping, comes from the sitting room. The child’s hand grips the brass handle and eases the door open. No flames flicker in the grate. Evening light slants through the French windows, making a pattern of squares on the carpet. That sound comes again, but it isn’t like a mouse scraping. It’s a wet sound which comes in jerks and gasps. The child notices that one of the cushions is missing from the sofa. You must never take the cushions off the sofa. You must not use them to bounce on, or build dens with, or do head-stands on. You must not move them at all.
A foot lies on the floor between the sofa and the armchair. The child cranes her neck so that she can see. Her father is lying on the floor, curled up, his head pressed into the missing sofa cushion. His glasses have fallen off and lie on the carpet. A shawl – red and gold and orange in a pattern like question marks – is scrunched up against his face. He’s got it pulled in so close to him that not one corner sticks out, not even a strand of the fringe. The child’s mother kneels close to him and they’re both quite still. And suddenly those words seep from the walls. Amnesia-cat-teaser-Rhodesia. Glove-misting-dove-hissing-gone-missing. All most upsetting and disappointing. Such a shame they couldn’t come. The situation in Rhodesia is so difficult at the moment.
A hand reaches over the child’s shoulder and the door closes in her face. The child looks up expecting to see Rob. But instead she’s looking at bones and staring eyes. The piranha fish have eaten all the flesh off him. The child puts her hands out to him but he’s moving towards the kitchen, head down. He stands at the kitchen sink, and it’s full of dirty pots, and he’s leaning over them, making a choking sound. Then his hands grip the taps and water spurts everywhere. He drops down beside the sink – his hands, face, shirt soaked. I must go and get the grown-ups, the child thinks. But then she remembers that there aren’t any grown-ups any more. They’re making that sound, which they shouldn’t make. And they’ve put the sofa cushions on the floor which they shouldn’t do. Not even for dens or handstands.
The telephone rings and they hear the child’s mother go to answer it. This is not the same as the telephone calls before. The mother’s voice is dull and she says sorry several times. Then the receiver goes down and she flames into the kitchen, shouting. What have you been doing? You’re not to go playing in the sheds at the farm. Do you understand me? Her face is all squeezed up and her eyes are full of red veins. I’ve told you before. A spike could fall down and go right through you. Or a blade could drop and cut off your hands.
The child starts to explain. We have to go to the farm. Mr Reynolds is a kidnapper. He’s got a bag with a bloodstain on. And in the woods there are marks on the trees which are pleas for help.
No, no, no! The child’s mother grips her by the shoulders and shakes her. Don’t be so stupid. Of course Mr Reynolds isn’t a kidnapper. All these silly things you invent and you just don’t know when to stop.
But it’s true! You don’t understand. There are pieces of bread, and a fire where a camp was. And so we know that this princess is somewhere close. And because of you, she’s never going to be found. And she’s going to die there in the woods, all on her own.
Stop this! Stop it now! Perhaps there are fires and bags and bread and I don’t know what. But there isn’t any mystery. You have to understand – there are perfectly reasonable explanations for all of these things.
Marsh End House, Malthouse, Norfolk
Christmas, 1990
Nothing has changed here but everything has. I lie in bed and stare at the pink rocking horses which prance on the wallpaper, the line of teddies on the shelf, and the green frog stickers on the chest of drawers. I’m seeing this house as Jack would see it, and I’m explaining to him what my life was like when I lived here all the time. The daily journey to school in Sheringham and back. Mass on Sundays, a walk on the marsh. Boredom stretching from one horizon to the other. Long afternoons spent lying in this bed, after an asthma attack. And all the time my mother telling me how lucky I was, because we lived near the sea, except there wasn’t a beach, or any cafés, or a pier, or candy floss. Just mud and caravan parks, a boatyard and a smell of rotting fish.
I cough and my throat stings. My head is heavy and I feel sweat under my hair. Even before I left Moscow I was ill, and since I got home two days ago, I’ve been in bed, sleeping, reading and listening to the radio. The news is all about the fall of Mrs Thatcher and the war in the Gulf. That’s what is going on in the real world. Except for me the real world is Moscow and Jack. My mother slides into the room and comes to stand beside me. ‘Do you feel any better?’ She straightens my sheets and blankets, tucks them in. She’s going to refill my hot-water bottle and fetch some aspirin. Perhaps she should call Dr Evans? No, I don’t need a doctor and I don’t need aspirin.
She’s just going to tidy up a few things, then she’ll sit with me while she does some sewing. The truth is that she’s enjoying all of this. She draws the curtains, then picks up a lavender-coloured cardigan which lies in a heap on the floor. ‘Oh I like that,’ she says, as she puts it on a chair. She asks me questions about Moscow, and tries to sound enthusiastic, but deep down she distrusts any place east of Berlin. She herself is Hungarian, although she never mentions it. All I know is that two years before she met my father she walked ten miles across a frozen lake at night to get out of Hungary. She carried with her one suitcase. Now the only evidence of her nationality is the Hungarian Bible next to her bed, a china bell on the bedroom mantelpiece, and the kind of blind patriotism which only immigrants ever have.
‘Well, of course, I think it’s marvellous what Rob’s doing,’ she says. ‘Because somebody’s got to try. But I fear it won’t do any good. You can’t really do anything about the Russians.’
I start to explain why it’s different now, but my throat rasps and I cough. She reaches for a glass of water. ‘That cough is terrible. I hope it doesn’t make your asthma worse.’
‘Mum, I don’t have asthma.’
‘Well, that’s certainly good news, isn’t it? I do worry. It’s so difficult to call. Even if I ring Rob’s office, I sometimes have to dial twenty times to get through. What would happen if you became really ill in Moscow? I’m sure that if Rob could see some future in all
this he’d come back to England.’ She gathers up papers, and taps the edges of them down on to the desk, making them into a neat pile.
Maya says that my mother used to be beautiful. It’s true that she’s got high cheekbones, bone-china skin and yielding eyes, but she looks years older than she is. Partly it’s the 1970s orange and brown cotton smock and leather boots with chunky heels. Her philosophy is: why go and buy new clothes when the ones you’ve got are perfectly good? And those beads – almost certainly made by some African co-operative. I always look at her and think, Go on, buy a luxurious red coat and sleek suede boots, eat a big cream cake, then spend the rest of the day watching bad television. But it’s never going to happen.
‘Such a shame Rob didn’t come for Christmas, but I suppose his father needs him.’ She pours me a glass of lemon barley water from a jug on the bedside table. Of course, I haven’t told her that I didn’t invite Rob for Christmas. He kept waiting for me to do that and, when I said nothing, he invited me to Nice to stay with his father. But that wasn’t possible because I needed to pass through London to get my visa, and so we decided to spend Christmas apart. Just one of those logistical inconveniences, nothing more than that.
My mother opens her sewing box and places the chair from my desk closer to the bed. ‘Why is there a problem with Rob?’ she asks. ‘I don’t think you could hope for anyone better. He’s always so positive about everything.’
On the chest of drawers, the toadstool night-light is still there, although it hasn’t been used in years. And the Bluebeard book still lies on the shelf. I don’t have to open it to see the pictures of the castle with the fountains and peacocks and chandeliers. I think of my father’s hands, turning the pages, passing through that speckled light.
‘Mum, you know, I’ve been meaning to tell you. In Moscow I met Maya.’