Shadows on the Mirror

by Frances Fyfield

  She forgot the man, forgot to look for him, concentrated on the book, used her talent for losing the sense of time and place. It was the first contrast he could see between this and other meetings, the first insult and the first fascination. There she was, sublimely unconscious of his existence, lost to him, sitting in a corner and smoking without the smallest concern for the image she made, half-way down a bottle of excellent wine, carelessly turning a page, profoundly content to exist, with or without his presence. She was not allowed such nonchalance, nor could he know how difficult it had been to achieve, but it was unnerving all the same, greeting a woman who looked as if it would not bother her in the least if he had simply failed to arrive.

  So why did he try? He who hated wine bars, assignations, anything unpredictable and women in particular. Hated the way they shrank from him, or opened up like sea-anemones looking for prey, every orifice gaping greedily in a panoply of slack mouths, glistening for himself, or for any other. Docile animals on heat. Equally, he loathed the others of sly reserve, with their tongue-tied giggles, looking and preening, wobbly and silly in response to the worst flattery, voluble after the most bland curiosity, as tactile as waxy flowers. He despised as much the brittle wit which proved itself with funny faces, wisecracks, street wisdom and worldly knowledge displayed to show how wise, how sharp the speaker. Charles had met only one woman inside the last fifteen years of his own life who did not fall into one of these three categories, did not respond towards one of these extremes, adulation, stupidity, or competition. While he, chameleon that he was, would enter into the spirit of all roles, changing colour or changing skin, shivering beneath it all with sheer dislike of playing games with those less skilled. For what? The horror of the prospect of failure, not of going home alone (although he would often circle the block rather than enter his own abode after midnight: not dread, simply disappointment not to find anyone there). Whatever he had hoped to find for her replacement proved as elusive as ever. For more than two years he had been in pursuit, been offered, looked beneath stones, while sexual gratification was always provided by some willing Maria, some commercial body paid for humiliation. Desire, naked or otherwise, repelled him. Indifference or refusal, any controlled or hidden reaction, had an effect dramatically opposite. Charles liked to hunt, but if he lost, was crossed, ignored, or worse, humiliated, the fury and the violence were terrible in manifestations cold, sharp and calculating.

  And there in the bar was the graven image of his wife, before she was disfigured, the woman he had sought for two years. Sarah Fortune could have been the double in feature, superior in wit, but the nose, the mouth, the shape, the walk, all the same. Apart from that quality of innocence, there was a shining kindness in her intelligent face, which Charles mistook for his ideal of purity.

  He remembered the last Porphyria. I love you, she had said. ‘How much?’ he had asked, wanting to know at first, later shouting at her. ‘Surely you can do better than that; you do not love me enough to serve me . . . Tell me something I can believe . . .’

  ‘Why should I, Charles? I’m only your prisoner, so I’ll say, I love you, Charles, and you can believe it or not, as you wish. I’ll say whatever you want me to say . . .’

  And then he had hit her, hated her for all that endurance in her refusal to bend to his will. She had clawed back at him, screaming. He could not remember any pain, nor, as she had told him later behind her mask, had she.

  No pain felt she;

  I am quite sure she felt no pain.

  Like a shut bud which holds a bee,

  So said Browning.

  Here was the new Porphyria, his wife before he had marred her. She was not dead, had never left him after all.

  ‘You are very beautiful,’ he had told Sarah Fortune.

  ‘For the compliment, thank you. I shall treasure it. Although it isn’t true. I don’t think I have that quality. Perhaps I’m lucky; well constructed, built to last. But not, I think, beautiful.’

  ‘Are you always so pedantic?’

  ‘No. A response to awkwardness, a lawyer’s trick. A desire to be exact, and seen to be honest. Even in candlelight.’

  ‘Why awkward? Do I embarrass you?’

  ‘Yes, since you ask.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You are a man of singular attraction, and I am slightly afraid of you. I tend to be pedantic when wary, or weary. At the moment I’m suffering from both. You must forgive me.’ She sipped her wine, and smiled.

  Bizarre conversation, so easily slipping from pleasantry and into this disquieting intimacy so soon. And the scarred faces he saw in his dreams faded away into this cool unscarred mouth which told neither truth nor lies, showed humour but no deference, both open and closed. Only after he had circled the block, pressed open his own door, entered his cold house, did he notice how skilful she had been. He knew no more of her life, her history, her tastes, and more importantly, where she lived than he had known in the beginning. Unwilling perhaps, but this time he was better equipped for pursuit and all the rest would follow. A pursuit he would not confess to Ernest Matthewson, but still a pursuit of his pure ideal, the chase to be surreptitious and delicate in tune with the goal. He had dreamed of her daily. O my Porphyria. Perfectly pure and good.

  Put him out of mind, Sarah thought, pounding up the steps from the tube. No one watches you, knows you, no one ever has. Don’t ruin it all by being a fool. Nothing is getting worse. He may have kissed you once, but he has not rung that bloody phone in days. (She remembered the kiss, an expert pressing of himself into herself, knowing she was too polite to escape or show the squirming revulsion of her mouth.) He had taken the refusal as a sign of innocence – dear God, what an irony. But he did not, could not possibly know where she lived. No one knew that, unless she had asked for them to know. Safe, so she was. Safe as daylight. And late again. Joan took the telephone calls for Miss Fortune, worried and resentful. Some of the many men left names, some did not. Fred could not wait to see her. Pink Jade had lost in the four-thirty at Leicester but, as always, he had another, better horse, which would make their fortunes brighter.

  CHAPTER NINE

  In the darkness of north Norfolk, horribly still after the noise of his familiar suburb, Ryan heard a dog bark, snuggled back into his bed, and dozed, wondering how he should be so content. All this was his wife’s idea, but just because he was so anxious to please her these days did not mean that Ryan was putty in her hands. The resistance to her wishes and whims might have been token, but it wouldn’t have done to let her know how anxious he was, so he did his clever best to hide it. In turn, she was well aware of the anxiety and took a smug satisfaction in it. Serve him right: infidelity was a dangerous game and it was he who had taught her how to play. Ryan’s telling himself that she was only taking her revenge, a preliminary, perhaps, to their still tenuous marriage settling into equal terms, did not make his life easier. Cold comfort was his own counsel, recognised for what it was as clearly as he could see that the new hairstyle, prettier clothes and trimmer figure were not for him, but for someone else. A man met in the afternoons and early evenings of life. Ryan, receiving payment in kind, was humbled by the knowledge. Anything she liked, as long as she did not abandon him into that homeless wasteland he had inhabited when he had temporarily abandoned her. So now, while she preened a little, ruled her roost with a firm hand, and positively encouraged him to stay out late in the evenings, Ryan held his tongue, took the small mercies of her scrupulous care of him, and agreed with all her plans.

  No foreign holidays this year, she had said. What’s wrong with England? Too much money gone on clothes and her new car, Ryan thought, and made a big show of nagging which was met with the iron will he had expected. Ryan did not give a damn where they went. Family holidays were his idea of hell and a fisherman’s cottage on the Norfolk coast struck him as a singularly unpleasant alternative, but after he had looked at a map and read a book of words, she had seen him become suspiciously resigned. He had learned that the pla
ce where they were bound boasted a pub which sold the best bitter in the world, and five miles away was Merton-on-Sea, the village and tiny port where Elisabeth Tysall was last seen. Busman’s holiday, maybe a little scouting over the dunes, the thought of it obscurely cheering. Ryan laughed at the thought of himself as country detective; he had never spent more than a day or two out of the city, but especially in the context of his uneasy family life, the sniff of Tysall was enough to resign him to the packing, although it might not be enough to ensure a week of harmony. His was not that kind of family.

  Ryan’s boys were nine and six, and through all the hours when they drove him to distraction he loved them more than the world, and willingly accepted the wisdom of his wife’s holiday decision when he saw them rushing in and out of the small, square cottage she had found. The dreadful details of the place dismayed him: the lack of light, the tired-looking beds, thin curtains and cold thick walls, but he could see it was all the details which so captured his children. They were howling with excitement. ‘Dad! The garden’s full of nettles, and there’s a shed, Dad, with a door hanging off and all spiders inside . . .’ ‘Dad! There’s a ditch at the front with frogs and newts, and my blanket’s got holes, Dad, look . . .’

  Wonderful, thought Ryan. Fucking marvellous.

  But something was there which charmed him by the end of the third day, when the silence of the place had ceased to alarm him and the strange creeks creeping inwards from the sea no longer preyed on his nerves. They had actually, in the absence of any other entertainment, swum in sharp frozen bursts, with the wife neat and blue-skinned in a new bikini, which Ryan noticed even between chattering teeth, liking the idea that for the first time in six months he knew where she was for every minute of the day. She seemed to like it too; their double bed was soft and sagging, so they rolled into the middle, gratefully sleepy with fresher air, but not that sleepy. Comfortable love and talking, surprising chatter for a man of so few words in his own house. By instinct, Ryan knew better than to force the pace of this intimacy by asking questions in those quiet and sympathetic hours. Nothing would have wrecked the harmony more effectively than him saying, ‘All right, who is he, this other bloke?’ So he stroked her reddish hair instead, told her all about Tysall, with some notable omissions which they could never discuss, and persuaded her to spend a day in Merton-on-Sea. With a couple of hours off for him to amble into the local nick and see if anyone had heard of a certain missing lady whom no one else believed was dead. The wife was as full of new wisdom as Ryan. This domestic peace, this actual confiding in her of something to do with his work, was well worth the sacrifice. She and the kids would find a boat. Ryan could wander at will, and would miss them immediately.

  He found the local bobby on the quay, gossiping and laughing with housewives, difficult to sound at first, calmly suspicious next. But prejudice against a confessed member of the Metropolitan Police, renowned to rural forces as being overpaid, over-corrupted, arrogant and flash, had not fully permeated into the mind of PC Curl, who simply liked people and had a position in his own community tantamount to the local vicar, only more important. He was easily persuaded by Ryan’s open face which was flushed out of city pallor by three days of gusty sun.

  ‘Not official, you say? Mr Ryan, you say? Elisabeth Tysall? Oh yes, went off to America, didn’t she? They had a house, up there . . .’ He waved uphill, away from the quay. ‘Had an accident, she did. So she said, ’bout two year ago. Used to come here three or four times a year. Very nice lady, very polite.’

  ‘Did they know many people here?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice. Not him anyway, but she’d talk to anyone. But it’s a crying shame that house being empty. Plenty of young folk around here could use that house.’

  Ryan listened, trotting beside the long length of PC Curl, laughing and praising, comparing lives. Finally, still talking of anything else but Mrs Tysall, they turned into the tiny police station on top of the rise.

  ‘Open every day we are, in summer that is,’ said PC Curl, proudly. ‘No call for us much in winter. They have to go to Fakenham and report their missing dogs.’

  The man’s placidity was wearing, and Ryan envied the kids out on a fishing trip. They’d be full of it, he longed for them, while over a steaming mug of tea he was almost trusted.

  ‘Now see here.’ Even his voice was changing, developing the local speed. ‘There’s no inquiry going on about this Mrs T. Just me happening to think that her disappearing is a bit funny. No one ever saw her again after she was down here early part of last summer. No trace. Never came back.’

  Curl shook his head dumbly.

  ‘Why should there be anything? She don’t live here. She’s living in London, with her husband or without him, let him worry. She had a little puppy second last time, but didn’t bring it back. Probably got tired of it, wanted a string of babies, that one. Strange creatures, women. And she said in the shop she was going abroad, see.’

  They both watched vapour rising from the tea.

  ‘But,’ here PC Curl chortled with remembered worry, ‘my nephew in spring, after the high tides, he found her bank cards.’

  Ryan gripped the mug, and let it go hurriedly. Too hot, and the rest of him flushed with sudden heat from the fingertips down, sipping slowly to save it becoming obvious.

  ‘Bank cards?’

  ‘Yup. Them things, Access and Barclay. Can’t like them myself. They get people into all sorts of trouble. But they don’t perish in the sea. Most things do.’

  ‘Did you report the finding?’

  ‘Nope. Why should I? Checked with the bank places, all computers, Access and Barclay. Discontinued, they said, not lost or stolen, nothing else for me to do. She should have handed them back, they said, if she didn’t want them anymore, but she probably just chucked them off the quay. People are always chucking things off the quay. They don’t realise how they come back, eventually. Might take a year or two, but they usually come back.’

  ‘Where did the boy find them?’

  ‘Out in the channels, stuck in the sand-banks, down a hole, he said. Little bugger used to be frightened of the water, now he can’t get enough of it. Loves them creeks, ever since his dad got him a dog. Walks up there at low tide. Always bringing me things. Tell you what, he’s not at school today. I’ll call him in. He’d like to meet a copper from London. Make his day for him, but you’d better look fierce. Only lives on the quay. He’ll be home now. Tide’s high. Nowhere for him to go.’

  When Ryan faced the boy in the bright daylight of the front office where no one seemed to consult the police except for a chat, he saw a golden child of spectacular thinness and more freckles than he had ever noticed on a ten-year-old. They had merged into a dark shadow over the bridge of his nose, making him look smeared, a permanently worried sand-boy. Quiet child, Ryan thought. Fit as a monkey, and, given the task of prizing secrets out of this little head, he would have felt more optimistic with a team of professional blaggers, each armed with a lawyer. Another half-hour, delicate questions unravelling from the child. Do all coppers in London carry guns? Has anyone ever had a go at the Crown Jewels, and if they did, how would they do it? And had the Queen ever come to where he worked? And where, at last, had he, over-polite boy, so different from Ryan’s own, found the plastic cards belonging to Elisabeth Tysall?

  ‘In the creeks, right out by the sea. You can walk all the way out there.’ Well, fancy that. Did that mean they were actually dropped there? The child burst out laughing, pleased with superior knowledge. Oh no, it didn’t mean that at all. They could have come from the quay, from a boat, or all the way from Brancaster, miles either side. The water, you see, takes things everywhere. No clue at all in where they were found, how silly of him.

  ‘Anything else with the cards, was there?’

  ‘No.’ They had a pause of infinite length. ‘But they had a piece of elastic keeping them together.’ The mouth was firmly closed. ‘I’d best go. Mum’ll have tea . . .’

 
‘And so must I,’ said Ryan. ‘Or my wife’ll kill me. Thanks for the afternoon. Come and see me in London.’

  All suspicion lost in their final easy burst of goodbyes, uncle and nephew united in secrets and opinion. ‘Oh no,’ they said. ‘Don’t mean to be rude, but you wouldn’t see me dead in a place like that.’ Ryan might as well have suggested a day in Valhalla, and he left them as he found them, courteous, closed strangers.

  The boy had found the whole handbag trapped in the heather at the top of a bank. Or rather, his dog had found it, crazy puppy, new Dad’s idea to reconcile him to life and his terror of the sea. A leather bag full of sand and wonder, half-chewed and stiff by the time he had rescued it by running half-way to the sea in pursuit. They might have taken away the puppy, or punished her, and the handbag was still in his own room, what was left of it. Good, salt-ridden leather. The dog was still chewing it. The coins in the purse had been tempting, but the sodden letters, tied up in cellophane like the parking-tickets his uncle gave to tourists, bits and pieces, rings, the purse itself, had all gone on Dad’s bonfire. Only the niggling conscience, and the fear that they would not burn, had transferred the plastic things to his favourite uncle, with half story, half truth. Uncle had understood. They didn’t want trouble, either of them.

  Best friend to man and boy, Malcolm’s dog wanted nothing but his existence. He had decided to call her Dog, a name of dignity he thought, because he would never be able to think of her as anything else, and she was, after all, the only dog in the world. She loved the windows of his flat, loved the park with the children and the grass made brown by football players and walking populace, thick with dirt and rich in smells. She had a remarkable penchant for following women and fawning on them, but most of all she adored Malcolm with a devotion bordering on the manic, and the sound of his step on the stairs provoked such an exhibition of frenzied affection they were left exhausted.