‘Perhaps you could stay with me? I’d feel safer then.’ Of course he would, as long as she needed, preferably a very long time. Sleep now, Helen, he ordered her, and she slept, the fingers round his loosening their grip. He kissed one side of her bruised mouth, and in the relief of finding her alive, could not have cared if she were scarred or limbless. Nothing could make her less than, well, his thoughts stumbled on the word, beautiful.
‘Clive? It’s me. Sissy.’
‘I know it’s you.’
The old, familiar lurch. ‘What’s up, Sissy? Must be urgent for you to phone me at home.’ A rebuke in the words: the woman was moving closer, so close he could hear his wife’s voice in the kitchen at the same time as hers, arguing with the children, too close for comfort.
‘Sorry. Couldn’t find you in Chambers. Don’t think I’d do this without reason.’ His turn to be rebuked, for suspecting Sissy of indiscretion without reason. ‘Clive, something I must tell you, regarding Cartwright. Now Quinn won’t like this, but it worries me to death. I wanted to ask you, better than failing to sleep on it.’
‘The thunder, Sissy, that’s what kept you awake last night.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Clive, listen. Had a con late yesterday with my ghastly instructing solicitor, last minute stuff, you know.’
‘Yes, I know. So did we.’
‘And when he went to the loo, or phone, or something, I forget which, I picked up his correspondence file, had a quick squint; he’s very selective, that chap, in what he tells us, guards his client’s letters like the crown jewels, self-important little bum, but anyway, I found these letters. Mrs C organising to pay Jaskowski’s seventeen-year-old son – wait for it – five thousand pounds, after the trial. All neat and above board; incredibly sanctimonious, unconvincing reasons, I couldn’t believe it. But why Clive, why? It offends the nostrils, more than somewhat.’
Silence. Too late in the day to absorb another drama without difficulty.
‘Are you there, Clive?’
‘Yes. What do you want me to do about it?’
Exasperation oozed from Sissy’s tones.
‘Do? Well, you idiot, what do you think? For promise of payment, on whatever terms, I read payment for services rendered. God alone knows what services, I don’t. But even if we lose this case on the facts, I’ll be damned if we lose it because our bloody client’s tried to interfere with witnesses: what kind of fools will we look, to say nothing of who might get hurt? Tell the officer. Or tell the solicitor to tell the officer. How do I know what she’s doing? At least tell the officer, in confidence, what I’ve told you. I can’t: I’m not prosecuting, but you can. Will you do it?’
Clive shook himself like a dog fresh from a pond.
‘Yes. I’ll do that now.’
‘And Clive?’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t let on how you know. It’s not necessary.’
Trust Sissy, eyes in the back of her head, more suspicious than he knew how. Postpone supper, back to Chambers, look out the papers, find officer’s number, or that solicitor, what was her name. Relief in sudden activity, gut reaction to words from Sissy which would always double as orders, not like the softness of Mrs Barrow, non-ambitious wife and mother. He liked Sissy better now than he ever had. Few had her scruples or her strength.
They would never have that weekend away.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mary was used to the bullying in her own household. She did not bow to it, she rolled with it like a ship without sail, wallowing in the calm of constant, slight depression. Like her sister-in-law, she clung to her favourite charges, came to ignore the rest. Unlike her sister-in-law, she did not regard the treatment of fate to be sufficiently unkind to justify wholesale abandonment of children she did not like, and Mary’s burdens were the product of a duty which Maria, her one time bosom friend, had foisted on her. Said to be temporary, this housing of three extra mouths: by now it had gone on so long she had forgotten when the resentment began, probably the first week. Little Stanislaus, OK, she loved little Stanislaus, and so did his cousin, but Edward, what a pig, a threatening pig; she could have put him out of doors after an hour. He was like his father, worse if anything. Peter had been fine at first, funny thing, but you couldn’t get close and there wasn’t the time to try, so when Ed waded in on his behalf, adopted responsibility wholesale, she let them get on with it. Enough to do with all the rest, cooking, cleaning, the church, her own mother, and what else? Did Maria think she ever slept at all? As sympathy curdled for Maria, and for Ed, so it soured for Peter, ally of them both, tarred with their brush. She saw he was clean, rigorous in that, fed him his food, and was unnerved by the silence of his presence, irritating little boy, always so nervous, you wanted to shake him. Nothing wrong with him: he went to school didn’t he, played and all that? Why should she worry for him, he was spotless. Psychiatrist, that woman from the Social said he needed. Rubbish: it would never be said a child in her house was mad, not even a child like Peter. He was quiet, was all: so let him be quiet. She had her own to care for.
Summer had been a relief. All of them out of her hair, less chance of seeing Edward at all. Why did he stay if he hated them so much, why not shove off and leave them in something like peace. Then maybe Maria would take Peter back, let her keep Stanislaus, and life would be almost normal. Mary hated the meanness of her own thoughts, justified them in confession, did her duty. Peter was easy to ignore; didn’t seem to mind whether he was noticed or not, and at least said thank you whenever he spoke at all, better than his brother.
Even so, with the residue of responsibility, she who could ignore his presence could not ignore his absence. Bed used, but no appearance at breakfast, no thin thing in the corner bolting it down with the speed of a hungry dog. Probably out early on a fine day. She shrugged it away. Returning from the Saturday hazard to the shops, dragging the trolley up the single step chipped from many such encounters, wishing she had the kind of husband who deigned to help with the groceries, she found Ed’s note. One of them had condescended to come home – that she should be so lucky – written her a note, kind of him, ‘Pete with me for weekend – Ed.’ More than that and he wouldn’t have been able to spell it. Good of them to let her know, but wasn’t Pete a bit young to stay away nights? A weekend where? She knew enough to imagine it wouldn’t be luxurious wherever it was, but would it be clean? She didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all: she must tell his uncle and his mother as soon as possible. Phone everyone, but then what difference if no one knew where they were? Too much, all too much: unfair. They would have to go, worrying her like this, enough was enough after all.
In the middle of unpacking the shopping, four sliced loaves and a dozen eggs slipping to the floor, in came Stanislaus with his cousin, screeching and crying. Down by the canal, fell on a piece of glass, look at my knee: lovely, three-stitch drama, plenty of blood and grime. Blood she didn’t mind: grime was more worrying. Mary knew all about grime; gangrene, septic cuts, lockjaw and tetanus: you got it from dirt as well as every other disease known to man. She commenced battle with the grime. Peter was forgotten.
Edward had predicted the lack of panic. Calmer in the morning, he came to look for his brother and recognised the cold aspect of the room. He had sat on Pete’s bed, feeling the scarcely used sheets and the same anger he had known in Pete’s other absence, a sense of unauthorised betrayal. Another cigarette, the one adult habit Ed had adopted to the manner born, while he thought what to do. Find him, of course, before he was otherwise found. Deflect the half-hearted hunt Uncle Peter might instigate for his nephew, and above all deflect the temptation for either poxy relative to call the police. Ed had embarked that morning prepared for no more than quiet words in Pete’s ear since even in his own state of mild shock he had appreciated that the other strong arm tactics had failed. He had money with him, anticipated bribery on a grander scale than ever before, but not this: not this instant frustration, this obdurate refusal to deal. Little bastard, crumby
little stinker, wait till I get you, Pete … And besides, he had wanted the calm of Pete’s presence, wanted a touch of the familiar, a companion for the shops, for buying things, pretending that the night before had been a triumph to convince himself it had; wanted to act normal, a boy with his brother. Ed wanted to kiss and tell: Peter would not play, and Ed hated him for that. Like Michael Bernard with his dead wife, Ed smoking on the bed suddenly discovered his stunning ignorance of his brother’s average daily life. Find him? Where the fuck should he start?
Down by the canal, high above the muddy water on the fourth floor of the derelict warehouse, Peter watched his younger brother below fall on the glass from the broken windows from which he gazed. Warm in the shaft of sunlight which he occupied in the way of a cat, he had wanted to move, shout out, but the words strangled in his throat. Not the same scale of blood – look at Stan, hopping around screeching, enjoying the attention – but blood nevertheless, and the sight of it made him sick.
They had found a way in here once, he and his friends from school in the days when they still existed, sworn one another to secrecy until they had grown out of the secret or simply weary of it. Others had found the refuge since judging by the coke cans, crisp packets, smell of unguarded humanity, but not recently. The floor’s dust carried no footprints, the litter was old. The place lost appeal in summer, and the guard dog warning sign had done its worst. Stupid. There was no dog. There had been no dog when he had finally scrabbled up the stairs after midnight waiting for torch and bark to drive him back, shivering wet, cold beyond caring. Armed with the memory of how a newspaper could keep you warm, he had found some, but on balance, he did not think it worked: had cried himself to sleep no drier than before, woken colder, and only now, comforted by that kindly shaft of sun, did he believe he was alive. Alive, ravenous rather than hungry, throat constricted from crying, sore with the effect of his screaming, his mind hung out to dry, the rest of him dirty and torn, his hair thick with dust and cobwebs. Unable to view himself, he imagined his own reflection with disgust, and although vanity would not have kept him in hiding, he had inherited some of the meticulousness which was Aunt Mary’s obsession and Ed’s hallmark, so that conspicuous lack of it added to all the other guilt to make him even less inclined to move, do anything which carried a hint of decision. Peter ached for hope, for a wash, even for the sight of Uncle Peter, longed to be as free as little Stanislaus, longed for an end to it. At one point, when the sun hit the water of the canal, its murky depths had seemed the most comforting prospect of all: and it was that which had woken him, the very temptation of it. He knew he was alive because he knew he did not want to die.
Painful, being alive. So he had slept instead: woke when the sun had moved on, and his bladder was bursting. Through the metal windows, the canal bank was framed in its emptiness like a picture, unreal in its desolation. Early evening: one man and a dog, the rest at their meals. A long time to rest hungry before nightfall: decisions imminent, all of them hateful, his body roaring with hunger, weak with the need for food. Peter paced his way into darkness, drew pictures on the walls with a stone, carving a boy with a knife above the pre-recorded message of ‘Sadie sucks cock’. The inscriptions on the plaster absorbed him for a whole hour before he found the fire escape, whispered down in stocking feet clutching his shoes in search of food, full of the new cunning which made him a scavenger.
When could he go back? Not that night: not to his borrowed home, and not to the garden. Never to his own room, a room he had hated until now when it was barred to him, never there again, or to his mother, before he had made his peace with the Lady. Tonight, the night after all that blood, she could not be there, only others, looking out for Ed. Perhaps the next night he would find her if he survived so long. Before Ed found him. No one else would bother to look.
Lifting dustbin lids at the backs of the dead and silent cafés in closed Chapel market, searching among the debris left by the fruit stalls, Pete made a rich haul. Two stale loaves from behind the bakery, wafers by an ice-cream machine, bruised apples: a huge cardigan from a drain, plastic sheeting abandoned and torn from a stall. Peter had watched winos collecting like this, shuffling in litter for treasures: he had always remembered details.
In comparison with the first, the second night in the warehouse was comfortable. Until the morning, full of new obligations, the same roaring hunger, accompanied now by vomiting sickness. Water from the canal was not suitable drinking for small boys.
Dear God, what had she been saying to Geoffrey when he was holding her hand; what did she say? Too much, but she didn’t care; she believed in him, and it made her alive. She didn’t care if he thought her a fool, he may as well find out now. She couldn’t stop what he thought: she felt as if she loved him, couldn’t prevent it. Useless pretending she had anything else to lose.
Expensive flowers from the office made her want to cry again; reminded her of the garden, hemmed her in. She must go home and wait for Peter. Geoffrey must understand as much of this as he could, and, like it or not, help her. She didn’t want anyone else.
‘Comfortable?’
‘I’m Dopey, the dwarf with one eye.’
‘Sleep then.’
It was a triumph to be fetched home by ambulance, settled in her own disfigured bed, with him attending to all the domestic refinements like an efficient butler. Replaced the bedding sent to the laboratory for all its bloodstains might reveal, the rips in the mattress covered with a blanket putting across a mismatched view of normality. The windows were clean, the carpet less so, so that she shuddered at the stains, shame of a sort, noticed it all as she hobbled in, hazy and removed, antennae twitching. More flowers, real flowers, changing her mind from apprehension to the ease of relief, making her weepy. Absent for thirty-six hours, she felt like Rumpelstiltskin returning after a hundred years, but nothing altered beyond repair, Geoffrey so sensitively kind she wondered what she would have done without him and the gratitude weakened her more.
‘I can’t sleep, but you should. What time is it?’
‘Not late.’
‘Listen to me again, will you? After the trial, tomorrow, isn’t it? I’ll listen to you for a week. I’m sure Peter will come back tonight. You know that’s why I wanted to be sure there would be no strangers in the garden, one of the reasons why I so wanted you to stay … I’m sorry, you must think I’m mad.’
‘No, I don’t think that, but was he the only reason you wanted me to stay?’
‘Oh, no.’
Propped against pillows stiffly, bandaged ribs upright, she was leaning against him, his arm comfortably supportive. ‘Oh, no,’ she repeated, leaning her cheek against his shoulder.
Night sounds in another still night. Tyres on the greasy road sounding like pain, the rumble of trucks on the North London line. The kitchen light was on, door open, and they were waiting in the bedroom, fighting away sleep. Bruised Helen beneath his shoulder. ‘It’s best you stay on my left,’ she had said, ‘it’s the only profile I have left.’ ‘You’ll mend,’ he said. Sitting like old friends. Playing doctors and patients, he said: Ryan considers it most irregular – it offends his moral code. Rich, isn’t it? No one else will like it either. So what, she said.
Weak: kittenish weak, stiff, fingers in bandages, nose askew, stitches protesting, everything protesting, half happy, anxious.
‘He’ll be here; I know he will.’
‘Why so sure?’
‘Don’t know. The way we are. I always know.’
Geoffrey felt a tiny stab of jealousy, soon dismissed.
‘There’s no one,’ he had told her, ‘of Peter’s description, reported missing: no one on the social services’ “at risk” registers. I tried the football teams, found two out of three coaches who use the playground; no one recognises him yet.’
‘He’s not a particularly memorable face. You’ll see.’
‘Helen … something else …’
‘What?’
‘Edward Jaskowski: I found out
something about Ed. Remember Ed?’
But she was painfully upright, motioning him silent. ‘Shhh. I’m sure I can hear something. Can you go the other side of the door? He might not come in if he sees you.’
He could hear nothing, wondered if she was still concussed.
‘What if it isn’t the boy?’
‘I’ll scream. No, don’t go. I know it’s him. Wait.’
Peter was sick, shivering, shaking sick, did not know it was possible to be so sick. Hiding in doorways all the way here. If Ed had found him, he would have asked him to do it quickly while his back was turned. Ed, why did you leave me? Come back, I miss you.
If she was not there, he would lie down in the garden and sleep for ever, but if he had not been so sure of her presence he could not have come so far, and there was still that high wall. He missed his footing at the top, slithered and fell. Waited until the silence resumed, sensed the cat, and a light in the window. Relief swept over him like a wave. He stumbled up, into the camellia bush, and fell. Over the step towards the open door, and fell. Then into the still kitchen, fell against the table, called in a faint voice, fell. Feet regained, on down the lit corridor into her room, and there was the Lady, puffy, bruised, smiling at him, and he knew he was forgiven already: would be safe even with all he had to tell her, all the facts he had been working out, assembling and reassembling, remembered during the longest day, all the things Ed had said, which pieced into some terrible sense. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ his first dizzy words. ‘He didn’t hurt you because of me. And you’re getting better, aren’t you, Lady? Please tell me you’re better now. Please?’
He sank into a chair by her bed, eyes fixed on her face, voice gabbling.
‘Sshh, sweetheart, stay still a minute; look at the state you’re in. Quiet now. It’s all right, I promise, and of course it isn’t your fault, why should you think so? And I’m better all the time for seeing you.’
A Question of Guilt Page 23