by Clare Carson
She remembered the strange tension of the conversations between Pierce and Jim that had left her feeling scared.
‘He called her a slag and a whore and punched her in the belly. Told her she should get an abortion. Kicked her some more for good measure.’
‘Why didn’t she do anything? Leave? Call the police?’
‘For fuck’s sake, Sam. You know it isn’t that easy. Even less so then. I mean, can you imagine what would have happened if she’d called the police in the seventies? If a plod had bothered to turn up at all, Pierce would just have had to tell him everything was OK and they would have listened to his accent, tugged their forelocks and backed away.’
Anna was right, of course.
‘That day in Lewisham, when we went to the safehouse and the woman we followed, well, girl really...’
‘I knew that was his girlfriend.’ She sniffed again. ‘We were always given this Pierce is a hero bullshit. You must have heard the story about how Pierce saved the whole of Western civilization by stopping this gun-running route between Libya and Ireland.’
‘Yes, I had heard that story.’
‘That added to the sense that somehow whatever Pierce did at home had to be excused, forgiven, because he was this big fucking hero, risked his life and all that crap...’
Sam felt gutted. She had fallen for the Pierce myth too, believed that he was the Fisher King, the wounded hero who needed help. Pierce, the brave spy.
‘Valerie was relieved when he said he had to disappear,’ Anna said. ‘So was I. We were both glad to have a chance to get away from him, set up a new life by ourselves. But by then it was too late, the violence and the stress had already damaged her. You saw what she was like when she was staying with you. Not eating properly. Not sleeping. Scared.’
‘And then she had a miscarriage.’
‘Yes. Shortly after we left your place. And that really fucked her up. Not just the immediate effect. It did her head in and I think in some ways in the end it killed her, because she gave up caring about herself. Pierce had eaten away at her, made her feel she was worthless, deserved to be treated like shit. She knew she was ill, she knew something was wrong, but she didn’t do anything about it. She let it go. It was almost as if she wanted to die.’
Anna was crying. Sam reached over, found her hand in the dark, wrapped her fingers around hers, said nothing; some comfort being among the dead, a reminder that nothing is permanent. The pain as well as the joy will end.
‘Did Pierce know about the miscarriage?’ she asked eventually.
‘Somebody told him.’
‘Do you think he realized it was his fault?’
‘Of course he did.’
‘Did he try to make contact?’
‘No. Thank Christ. At least not then. Later.’
‘He phoned you?’
‘Yes. That’s right. Eighty-five. After he heard Valerie died. He must have got my number from somebody in Intelligence. He phoned me, told me how much he regretted what had happened between him and Valerie, tried to tell me how much he missed me, how much he’d like to make amends.’
Sam thought of Pierce leaving the white tile on Betty Corrigall’s grave; a tile for the woman who had been destroyed by the cowardly father of her baby. A community that judged her, not him.
‘Maybe he really did feel some remorse. Guilt.’
She knew it was a stupid comment. Once a bastard always a bastard.
‘Pierce feel remorse? He mopes around feeling guilty, but it’s all about him, isn’t it? Poor Pierce and his awful burden. He doesn’t give a toss about anybody else. He’s a total self-indulgent control freak. Haven’t you noticed?’
She had; she had seen his dark shadow – Prospero the manipulator – unnerved by the fleeting moments of threat. He had managed to control her, warp her thoughts about Jim, twist her arm into doing his bidding.
‘Everything he ever said,’ Anna continued, ‘was a ploy, a way of roping us into his way of seeing things, doing what he wanted you to do. He couldn’t cope with anybody who acted independently, thought for themselves.’
Sam couldn’t let it go. ‘Don’t you want to have it out with him, though? Face your demons and sort it out?’
‘Oh please, don’t give me all that closure stuff. It’s not what I want. You’re projecting your own feelings on to me. Just because you’re desperate to forgive your father doesn’t mean to say that I should find a way to forgive mine.’
Sam stared into the dark. Her eyes had adjusted now and she could discern the outline of the vault in front of her, lime-flaked walls glowing faintly, the dull grey of the lead containers stacked. Was she desperate to forgive her father?
‘Maybe Jim was never violent like Pierce,’ Anna said. There was an uplift at the end of her sentence, more of a question than a statement. Maybe. Sam kept her eye on the vault, took a deep breath.
‘Why are you sighing?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just...’ How old was she then? Fifteen. Standing in the kitchen, minding her own business one evening, conscious of his presence behind her. She had picked a glass up and it had slipped out of her fingers, fallen, splintered on the ground. An accident. She was about to bend down and collect the pieces but before she could move Jim was right there, behind her, fist in the air. ‘You clumsy fucking...’ She had raised her arm and blocked his blow.
‘You’ve got no right to do that.’ She had said it calmly. She had no idea where the words came from. One of the feminist books she had been reading maybe, fuck knows. But she said it as if she meant it, because she did. It was what she believed, and it worked. For her at least. Her words had an effect on him, she could see it in his face. Shame possibly. He knew when he was crossing the boundary. He had lowered his arm and walked away. The event had created a distance between them – or cemented the distance that was already there. But he hadn’t done it again. Three years later she had ended up working in a women’s refuge, seen women with black eyes and swollen face and it had put her own experience into perspective. Jim had his moments of aggression, but he wasn’t that bad. And anyway, as she had discovered from Harry, perhaps there was a reason for his behaviour; the interrogation, the violence, near death by drowning. Perhaps it was wrong of her to make excuses for him. It didn’t make his behaviour right, but it made it more comprehensible. She wasn’t exactly forgiving him. Reconciling herself with his memory, drawing some kind of a line, searching for some peace with his legacy.
‘Jim could be aggressive, but I don’t think he was a total bastard. He was a bit of a tosser sometimes though.’
‘You’re right. He was a bit of a tosser.’
She could see the outline of Anna’s face, her pale skin, her square jaw, and she remembered the last time they met in ’76, by the dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park, when Anna had taunted her with a secret about Jim, which she had refused to tell.
‘What do you know about Jim?’ she asked.
‘Valerie told me about it. She said that Pierce had put some bits and pieces in an envelope in the safehouse that he meant to take with him when he left – including a photo of me and some details that revealed all sorts of stuff about his identity. He forgot to remove it. After he found out his cover was blown, he ran off to Paris, scared to go back because he knew the place was being watched. So, typical Pierce, he asked Jim to go and find the envelope. And Jim said yes. My mum always said she thought Jim was reckless, but brave. And kind.’
Sam had been irritated by Jim’s attentiveness to Valerie when they stayed at their place but she could see, in retrospect, that he was right to be concerned – he must have recognized her vulnerability.
‘But you told me Valerie said fools rush in when she was talking about Jim.’
‘No, that was me being mean. Pierce told my mum that Jim wasn’t careful and he got caught and handed the envelope over to this Czech and that was why he had to go into hiding and keep quiet about everything – because Reznik had a photo of me.’
Sam wh
eezed, a sharp intake of breath accompanied by mould spores and firework smoke. She started to cough. Anna patted her on the back.
‘I’m OK. I’m OK.’
She wheezed again, tried to catch her breath.
‘Here, have some water.’
She swallowed the cold liquid greedily.
‘Pierce was lying.’ She wheezed again. ‘Jim didn’t hand the envelope over.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I found it in ’76. I went looking for you after our argument in Crystal Palace. I went back to the safehouse and found it in the garden.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I’ve still got it.’ Sam gulped some more water. ‘What a bastard.’ If Pierce was Prospero the master of the dark arts then Jim was Caliban, she thought now, Prospero’s abused and maligned slave.
‘That’s why I didn’t care if he died,’ Anna said. ‘Because he’s a bastard. I certainly didn’t want some psychotic arms dealer coming after me because he thought I might know where Pierce was hiding. I dropped a note through the door at Execution Wharf – straight after you’d told me Reznik was there, in fact. You told me where Pierce was hiding, more or less.’
‘I know. The tile on Betty Corrigall’s grave.’
‘Exactly. I guessed Orkney and looked it up in the Rough Guide. Collateral,’ she added. ‘That’s what we are. Collateral. Pierce the bloody hero and their stupid operations, that’s all Intelligence care about. They follow me around, but they’re not protecting me, they’re watching me to protect their precious bloody asset. So fuck that for a laugh. I wanted him dead.’
‘Death doesn’t resolve anything.’ Sam waved her hand at the vaults, the shelves of decaying coffins. ‘The dead are always with us. The arguments you had with them, the bad feelings, the unexplained memories – they don’t disappear. They live on with you. It’s better to deal with it now while he’s still alive so at least when he goes you’ll have some answers; you won’t be left wondering or wishing you’d told him exactly what you thought.’
She felt Anna’s hand on her arm. ‘You know, when he phoned me after he had heard about Valerie’s death and tried to engineer some great reconciliation between us I told him what I thought of him. I said as far as I was concerned, he’d murdered my mother and her baby and I’d left two tiles on her grave as a reminder of his crimes and I wouldn’t be happy until he was dead. I haven’t changed my mind.’
Sam screwed the lid on the water bottle, handed it back to Anna.
‘Unfortunately your note to Reznik didn’t work. Pierce got away.’
‘So I gathered. Did you warn him?’
‘No. He was gone before I got there.’
‘Who was it then?’
‘Some part of MI5.’
‘Wankers.’
‘Do you think that one guarding the gap in the railings has gone yet?’
‘We could go and look. What can he do to us if he sees us anyway?’ She said it with a hint of aggression. ‘Why are they still watching me? Reznik is dead. Their precious asset Pierce is safe to do what he wants to do. Stay. Go.’
‘Maybe Pierce told them that you said you wouldn’t be happy until he’s dead.’
‘That would be typical Pierce. Keep an eye on my daughter. She’s got issues. A bee in her bonnet. He’s probably told them I’ve got Soviet connections.’
She was right, Sam thought, he probably had.
‘They’ve given up watching me.’
‘Have they?’
‘I think so.’
‘Well, that proves how stupid they are, because you were always far more dangerous than me. It was you who killed beetles in jam jars with crushed laurel leaves, after all.’
‘Oh, not that again.’
‘I was joking. What I meant was – I reckon you’ve got a ruthless streak.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I meant it as a compliment.’
Neither of them spoke for a moment. No more fireworks whizzing, only the drip drip of a dreary south London night. Guy Fawkes over for another year. Sam dug in her pocket, scooped out the two red tiles she’d picked up from Valerie’s grave.
‘Here, you’d better take these back.’
‘No. You keep them. Do something with them.’
‘What?’
‘Dunno. You decide. What happened to the blue one? Did you give it to Pierce in the end?’
‘I did, but he left it in his kitchen and I took it back.’
Anna laughed. ‘When I was a kid he told me that he used coloured drawing pins to communicate with his contacts.’
‘Reznik?’
‘Probably. He said when they wanted to pass a secret message on, they stuck the pins in special places near escalators in underground stations. London. Paris. Prague. The colours all had different meanings.’
She knew it, Anna’s mysterious code.
‘What did they mean?’
‘Red meant danger, be careful. Look after yourself. Blue meant all clear. Go ahead as planned. And guess what white meant.’
‘I can’t.’
‘There’s a traitor in the house.’
Anna cackled wildly. Sam joined in, their laughter echoing around the vaults. No wonder Pierce had tried to get rid of the two white tiles Anna had sent him in ’76. And had been reluctant to take Anna’s blue tile when she gave it to him in the summer. He must have always wondered what games his daughter was playing with him, whether she would outwit him in the end.
Anna stopped laughing. ‘Have you still got the red one I gave you?’
‘I left it in a secret place on Hoy in ’76.’
Sam could hear Anna’s brain whirring. ‘Perhaps you should go and get it then.’
Sam sighed. She hated Pierce for manipulating her and Jim, but she still couldn’t help being pleased when Anna gave her a part in one of her plots. Maybe she was looking for an excuse. ‘I don’t suppose you know where I can find a hand gun, do you?’
‘Actually, I do. Why, do you need one?’
‘I don’t know yet. I haven’t worked it out.’
She felt Anna’s hand in her pocket. ‘If you do, that’s my new number. Give me a call.’
CHAPTER 31
London, 7 November 1989
SHE WAS TRYING to concentrate on her research proposal. She had a title, but little else. The Earl’s Bu: seeing below the surface. The ringing of the phone startled her. She ran down the stairs but Becky had beaten her to it.
‘Tom,’ she mouthed, smirked and passed her the receiver.
He wanted to meet and talk. There was a heaviness in the way he asked that made her fear he was going to have some kind of conversation about relationships, which she didn’t want. On the other hand, she did want to find out what he had been doing. She agreed to meet him at their usual place.
‘I knew you had something going with Tom,’ Becky shouted from the kitchen.
‘I don’t.’
*
SHE WRAPPED HERSELF in her overcoat, pulled a woollen beanie down to her brow. The wind had cleared the mist that had hung around for days. Rain slanted through the street lamp’s arc. She lowered her head against the gusts, lumbered along the railway viaduct, choosing the darker path beside the boarded arches; squatted nightclubs and raves over for the summer, the muddy patch behind the Vauxhall Tavern furred with fag butts and plastic beakers. There was an end-of-year sadness in the air. End of decade. End of era. She cut through the furthest arch, opposite the chainlink fence that guarded the wasteland below Vauxhall Bridge. Dumper trucks and cranes visible behind the crosshatch wire; signs of serious construction. Vauxhall, Jim’s favourite bridge, the place where he had died. In her head, the wasteland and foreshore were his memorial garden, and now it was being concreted. She was being stupid. Sentimental. She should let it go. Life, like the river, flows on. The tide was high. The loops of embankment lights were shining, but the muddiness of the water dulled their reflections. Everything was drab this evening. A jogger brushed past her as she climb
ed the steps to Westminster Bridge. Sam stared at her sweaty back, but she didn’t turn. As she had told Anna, Intelligence had given up following her.
Tom was sitting outside the café with a cappuccino in front of him. Seeing him there made her laugh; who else but Tom would sit outside in the wind and rain? Well, who else apart from Tom and her? They were similar in their odd habits. She sat at the bench opposite him across the table.
‘Why are you sitting out here?’
‘I prefer it to being inside.’
‘So do I.’
Silence. Sam didn’t usually mind silences – she often instigated them – but this one was awkward. ‘I’ll go and get a coffee.’
She returned with her espresso. A firework exploded over the river; its whizz and bang dampened by the rain. Tom jumped anyway, the coffee cup in his hand jiggling, foam and liquid spilling down his coat.
‘Shit.’
‘It’s only a rocket. Some kids must have had one left over from Guy Fawkes.’
‘I know that.’ He sounded defensive. ‘You’d jump every time you heard a rocket going off if you’d spent six months in Afghanistan.’
‘I wasn’t mocking you.’ She folded her arms, felt bad. She usually did mock Tom about his time in Afghanistan, tended to dismiss his stories as showing off. It wasn’t as if he was a soldier risking his life. All he did was take a few notes. ‘Do you think your stint in Afghanistan affected you badly in some ways?’
He raised an eyebrow; it wasn’t usually her who asked the personal questions. ‘Yeah. My mum was having a go at me the other day. She said I should go and talk to somebody. She came to visit me in my flat and she wanted to know why I’d chosen to live in a war zone.’
The fluorescent strip-lights of the Barrier Block flickered in her mind. ‘She’s got a point.’
‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.’
‘What about it?’
‘My mum thinks I might have it.’ He wiped his coat with a paper napkin. ‘You know what it is then?’