‘I don’t know Edward Jaskowski. I told you. Why should it affect my case? You’ve already said the boy says nothing. How can it be relevant?’
‘Because the prosecution may make it so, madam, if they can. The letter,’ he waved it gently, ‘is privileged, cannot be produced. Should they wish to introduce this new element, and there will be evidential difficulties, I shall resist it, of course; but it is enough, is it not, merely to hint at the existence of another Jaskowski. Stanislaus may do the same. Another Jaskowski, off on a frolic of his own, but nothing to do with you, again? There are means of introducing it. Were I Mr Carey for the Crown, I should find them.’ A sharper hint that, were the roles reversed, he would have found them by now. Quinn was beginning to prefer instructions from the Crown.
‘One last matter before we leave you to consider. The boy Edward says nothing, promises to say nothing, but Mr Bailey, a man of scruple, is frank with me, as Mr Carey has been. Peter, Edward’s brother, is injured, an accident. There is a bond there; the child is in care. Should pressure be brought to bear on Edward through that quarter, then this silence of his might not remain … as profound. Mr Bailey is, I repeat, a man of scruple, but I have no doubt that he is not beyond blackmail, no doubt at all. Witnesses are there to be used, madam … you understand that.’
He rose, height impressive, gown cumbersome, wig in hand.
‘May we leave you to digest this? You will know the permutations of it, far better than we, I think. Is there anything else you require? You’ll call the gaoler when you wish to see us? I beg you, madam, consider carefully. Should you be acquitted here,’ doubt of the outcome was implicit in his tones, ‘you are likely to face further charges. You will not be let go.’
In a moment of pity, Sissy left her cigarettes on the table. Time she stopped the habit. One day she might look like that, or come to smoke them with such desolation.
In the hollow distance Stanislaus heard the door slam, retreating footsteps, murmured voices.
‘Don’t like to be so close to her, Mr Ryan, you know?’
‘She can’t get out. Don’t fret, Stan. Mr Bailey has it all in hand. He may look like a punch-bag, but he’s got it all under control. Don’t cry now, Stan, there’s a good lad.’
‘Why not? My babies … I should be crying, you know.’
‘Look Stan, one of your babies has gone off the rails, but he ain’t all bad. He waited for Peter, like I said, didn’t he? Mr Bailey’s looking after Peter. He’ll do what he can.’
Ryan was secretly jubilant, openly reassuring, slightly impatient. Consoling Stanislaus was not likely to be his forte. In a minute, he could stop, leave him to the warder who was kindly; funny how people liked big Stan. Then he could leap upstairs and see what was happening in the big wide world.
‘She’s a wicked woman, Stan: it’s all her fault.’
‘Yes. Very wicked, you know?’
Hope lit his face, hope of exoneration and forgiveness, fading hope, tempered by sudden honesty.
‘And my fault too,’ he mumbled.
‘God’ll forgive you, Stan. You just give evidence. If you’re needed. God’ll forgive you.’ In the earnestness of the moment, and hoping in that brief passage of faith for the same, Ryan believed it.
Eileen had never had recourse to God. Father had murdered God along with Santa Claus and all other minor deities who interfered with his chain of command, leaving her infant mind to create its own plaster saints: clean-shaven heroes of handsome features softened by kindness, gentle ladies. These were the repertoire for her daily prayers. In childhood, these models had been youthfully middle-aged: in her own middle age, she fondly imagined them dead, each shot, with a round red hole between their perfect eyes, laid in rows alongside Papa. Latterly she preferred the images of youth.
Six months of imprisonment had turned the spotlight on Edward, shaky saviour. Six months in a shared cell of midnight shufflings, the tauntings of others’ nightmares, despite her unspoken authority over them all, had given Edward’s image the solidity of a rock, the status of hero, just as years of wanting had given Bernard the status of saint, as well as man to be punished. Of course she had hoped: hope sprang eternal even in a breast as unloved as her own. She had thought too, that the death of Helen West, the finality requested whatever words she had used, would lend her triumph enough to sustain the worst. Such a good death: a wiping out, ritual sacrifice of symbolic enemy. Eileen had believed in her own salvation as a gambler might believe in luck. Edward might fix the straight flush, Quinn might provide it, Helen might throw away the whole pack of cards with her disappearance. Luck was so infinitely capable of change. Mrs Cartwright, mature widow, had not inured herself to defeat.
Until Edward’s possible treachery unhinged her completely through Edward’s hidden weapon, a brother. The substitute son would sacrifice loyalty to her cause for the sake of a brother: for that brother his silence would be, how had Quinn phrased it? ‘Less profound.’ She repeated the words out loud, her voice shocking in the silence of the cell.
Puny, lying Edward would be held to ransom for a name he had never mentioned, was only the same as the rest of alien mankind, not marooned on the same island as she had believed. He loved another, this soulmate of hers treasured in memory better than a lover, and Eileen would rather risk life in prison than risk the witnessing of his defection. Anything in the world but that.
Let them sweat: in one last spurt of impotent hatred, let them sweat, all of them. No early recall of legal advisers to relieve the spectre of disaster in their eyes. Let them sweat, for as long as she was allowed. They had given up: she had seen it in their faces. They could not wait to be relieved of their duties, Quinn and his woman. Wait for an hour or two until she could wipe the same defeat from her face and her mind. There were all those years afterwards to plan revenge. Eileen stood in her cell, nine by seven with bunk, tossed her head, extended her arms, and pirouetted twice. She had seen no mirrors in months: mirrors considered too dangerous for women’s prisons. Without mirrors she could admire her own reflection, imagine a strong, girlish profile sparkling with invitation. One day, she would be invited to waltz by a handsome stranger whose lips would tremble with words of passion she had never heard, held in her arms, mesmerised by her dark eyes. Not yet. Not yet. She turned and turned again until she was dizzy, crashed against the wooden bunk and sat still, defying the dizziness to defeat her, bolt upright, staring ahead and counting time. After an hour and a half, she rang the bell.
Bailey had lied, a little, a hint of a lie, closely guarded against retrospective scrutiny. If Quinn believed, or Carey in his current state of suppressed triumph chose to believe, that Edward could have been persuaded to give evidence of Eileen’s seduction only to save his brother the same ordeal, then it had been a belief he had merely encouraged, not one he shared. Bailey had no intention of placing such a burden on Peter’s shoulders, nor would he have hinted any such possibility to Ed, who was by now in the hands of other skilful interrogators who would handle him with care and achieve nothing. Peter, having babbled once to a small audience was unlikely to repeat those words even if it were justifiable to ask for a repetition of such traumatic confession. The interests of justice would have to wait. Still, it had been an excusable lie, almost an abuse of Peter’s confidence, but if Eileen Cartwright could see the light of day, a message from her own gods ordering her to give up the emotional whip of three weeks’ trial by simply pleading guilty as charged, then so be it. He moved stiffly. Bruised chin and forehead, raw scraped hands, awkward walk with bandaged knees, all of him painful but clean. Edward would have approved. Sitting and standing were problems equalled by chronic lack of sleep. Geoffrey could almost have wished there had been more fat about him to absorb the impact of his rolling fall and fuel his day, but in comparison with the consequences he had managed to avoid, this was easy.
He hoped Helen would forgive the lie, the manipulation of the truth, this Chinese-whispered blackmail of Eileen Cartwright. On balance,
he knew she would, might even praise such acceptable ingenuity. He waited for the end of tension, the end of tiredness: better places in life than the canteen of the Central Criminal Court, resting tender elbow on a plastic table. Scribbling on the notepaper before him, he made a list of the day’s tasks should he be released, the day’s tasks against the day’s preferences. On the next page, he drafted a letter of resignation, crossed it through. No point: he should simply ask to transfer his expertise into some other direction. He wanted none of these dangers, none of these professional pitfalls, none of these dramas, fewer of the cruelties of persuading a Peter Jaskowski to talk. He wanted freedom of conscience, freedom of evenings, long summers, the sight of children, snug winters, and a woman to make happy. And if she would not have him, he would stay on her doorstep until she did. Suddenly the verdict, trial or no trial, plea or no plea, was less important than it had ever been. Geoffrey had rocked his own foundations, heard them resettling all around him, and for once allowed himself the luxury of hoping.
Today she had declared herself well, not well enough, but well. Life was all compromise, too much in abeyance for anything as profound as happiness, but that would be true three hundred days of the year at least. On some of those future days, the concern for Peter might lift even further than it had lifted today, although the mantle of it had been both lighter and sadder since the morning. He was well, smiling. He would remain in care, a small hostel they had said; he seemed to like it, and his fussy new foster parents seemed to like him. He had been allowed to visit his Lady, and despite his reserve, he revelled in all the new attention. Even his mother had joined the ranks. The boy had pink in his cheeks, spoke of Mam as a man might speak of a sweetheart, she needed looking after, he said. Eileen in prison for ever, after the surprise guilty plea to murder which had frustrated the journalists of three weeks’ worth of story. That jump of hers into obscurity had freed them all.
All of them but Edward, the last debtor. Unlikely to be away for more than eighteen months in real terms. Helen shuddered. Hope was the cure, and Peter might be stronger, fitter by then to resist him. For now, she could not read his mind, as if he had removed himself away from her translation. There was a new language to learn before she could swim back to understanding, and only then if he would let her.
Nothing was perfect then, only this October evening. Five weeks away from all those stitches, and the last of them removed. Aches and pains, a sinister yellow eye, a scarred eyebrow, little enough to show above her clothes. Return to work, she supposed; oh no, not yet, not in this mild sun, this Indian summer with garden glistening, warm enough for basking. Untidy Michaelmas daisies, straggly roses brown-tinged, healthy, dandelion-filled grass. Spring would show where she had put the bulbs. She turned the earth in the tubs with a trowel. Turn the earth in Geoffrey, she thought, and I shall find flint. Pieces of sharp flint in delicate loam, the whole of it rich for growth, unyielding if improperly treated, sensitive to handling. I should like to be this gardener for a long time.
Look at this garden, look at it now: you would not know who had hidden here, what scenes and fantasies had been enacted within its view, secret place, escape route, tranquil and unaffected now, free of the taint of violence. Not so Geoffrey Bailey: the footprints on his life, the marks of anguish, the conscience, brutal scenes from every case and all the episodes of marriage, they would never cover themselves beyond recognition. Good man, fine man: no one had ever advised him of those truths it had taken him so long to learn, that he would never be free of the crippling pity. Others were not afflicted: some never suffered the infection of grief or guilt: she and Geoffrey had drawn a short straw. Life with Geoffrey. A bed of thorn-filled roses.
Life with Geoffrey Bailey, police officer, anathema to mankind. How could she contemplate that, on an acquaintance so flimsy she had not even turned the surface? But there had scarcely been a time in the last three months when she had failed to contemplate it, a slow-burning conclusion, nebulously based, only recently touched by that passion which raised it out of the realms of a friendship. Meeting of minds, she called it; not a collision, but a touching of thinking, now less celibate, and anything but the platonic liaison of two professions allied by cause.
However uncomfortable, the bruises had helped, all those little disfigurements, his and hers, barriers against the awkwardness of nakedness which afflicted both of them, symptom of the dreadful importance of such initiation, sign of a fear of failure even though neither believed there was anything to fear. What was best, and this the agreement of them both, was the hugging which followed, the release of two almost able bodies into the real intimacy of affection. Only for the lucky, this drowsy delight of embraces and talking, nudged out of sleep so softly in the morning with the very relief of his presence.
‘Why me?’ he had asked. ‘How can you want me?’
‘I could ask the same,’ she had replied.
‘But I asked first,’ he said. ‘So you must say first …’
‘I can’t say, but I do.’
‘Ah, Miss West, evasion; I expected nothing more from a lawyer. Tell me, I need to know.’
‘If I can. Then you have to tell me; you’re being unfair to insist. Do I have to do this? I do? Well then, if this were a love-letter, it would be full of spelling mistakes which would unstring it altogether, and the string, I warn you, is not so confident even without that. Why ask? It’s no test of anything to put it into words. I like the little black heart of you, I’ll always find it good, even if it isn’t mine to know it. Is that enough? There could be more … Enough for me. Now you, speak to me.’
‘I couldn’t say why, unless I flattered you until your head grew larger than the pillow.’
‘Go on then,’ feeling the hand entwining the fingers between her own, and the soft voice of him, teasing her.
‘Oh, no, not here, not now, but I shall, piece by piece. For the moment, it’s an act of faith I need. You’ll have to bear such simple repetitions; I love you until I’m weak with the thought of it. You must simply believe me … Do you believe me?’
‘I believe you. If I didn’t, I should have to invent it to stay alive.’
‘Marry me then.’
‘Now that’s foolish. You’ve run away with words …’
All spoken at dawn, before the second waking, soft, passionate trust so strong in its quiet explosion he had wanted to sing out like a happy child, wondered if the hunger would ever die, and God and the Commissioner be damned. If she would not marry or live with him, he would be celibate for ever, would dwell in one of those extremes: there was no other choice, no compromise.
‘I have known him less than a year,’ Helen addressed the flowers, ‘and I know him not at all. For this cliffhanger, give me wings, or leave me marooned. We’d be better like you lot, meeting once a year, plenty of time to adjust the root before each spring. But how would I stand the winters? Marry me? Come home soon, but don’t ask me that. Not yet.’
Detective Constable Ryan and Mr Lawrence each tended their gardens flanked by children. Lawrence’s eldest was sick amongst the roses. More fertiliser please, said Lawrence callously, and watched in frustration as she ran away screaming for her mother. Daintrey had been wrong. A month away from the office did not relax the mind or improve the judgement: it clouded every issue with fractious cries, nasty responsibilities and his spouse resented the daily intrusion. Oh to be Michael Bernard, a childless, wifeless nervous breakdown. At least Lawrence’s enforced rest was near its end. God knows what would greet his return. Probably a thousand cases of careless driving, and fourteen files on fraud, for what? What had he done wrong?
Ryan had always loathed the garden until he had been deprived of such space, but now he found it restful performing the residual chores of the absent husband and father. She looked so pretty today, his wife, fresh lipstick and a rare unfrozen smile; another man perhaps? Not a thought he enjoyed. The kids had been so pleased to see him, gathering grass with eager hands, rolling around like puppie
s: Is this right, Daddy? Look at me, Daddy, and look he did. The Essex box, big lawn, nothing special, but when would he ever own the like again?
‘Stay for a drink?’ the wife had asked cheerfully. He thought of Annie, waiting, impatient these days, couldn’t blame her. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I will. Mustn’t stay long though. Must get …’ And there the words tangled. The heart stayed there, in Annie’s room, or at least he thought it did: but this, not that, was home.
Peter had found another garden, not an alternative, just another.
‘When you grow up boy, what’ll you be?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Come on! No idea at all? You must have some.’
This was his new friend, the old man in the park by the hostel: full of stories, grumbles, loved to talk but better at listening, and Peter enjoyed an audience these days.
‘Don’t know. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m running away tomorrow.’ That would make him listen harder, that would shock him, but the old man was unperturbed.
‘Oh yes? Up to you, of course, but I shouldn’t if I were you. Come on then, answer the question can’t you. What’ll you be?’
Peter thought briefly.
‘Me and my brother Ed, We’re going to have a big garden. Both of us.’
‘Growing plants you mean? A nursery? Plenty of work there, plenty work there.’
‘My brother’s very strong, you know.’ Defensively said.
‘I’m sure he is. Plenty to learn though boy, before you can grow things. You’ll have to start soon. Tomorrow even. Are you sure about running away?’
Peter adjusted himself on the bench. Six o’clock, almost supper, and still warm, with a hint of winter darkness. A long summer it had been. He would see the Lady soon, but it wasn’t the same.
‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘I should ask him first. I’ll make up my mind in the morning.’
A Question of Guilt Page 25