‘Yes,’ said Max, ‘I really do.’
Fried fish with rice. A tomato salad. ‘This is great, Max,’ I said as we ate. ‘Thank you.’
‘Arla helped,’ he said, but I could see the pride in him. As I smiled at Arla I sensed something angular and brittle in Millicent, some slight stiffening on the edge of my vision. Arla smiled back, and by the time I turned to Millicent, she was smiling too.
The doorbell rang. I got up to answer it, wineglass in hand.
‘What if it’s the police, Dad?’
Yes, I thought. What then? I put my glass down on the table.
‘Do you think it is, Dad?’ said Max.
‘I don’t know.’
I felt Millicent’s eyes on me. I nodded back at her. Courage, love. We fight this as a family.
It was Mr Ashani.
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I heard you through the wall.’
‘Mr Ashani.’ Relief coursed through me.
‘Nice,’ he said. He reached out his hand. I took his hand in mine. His grip was as firm as ever. ‘Nice,’ he said again.
‘Nice,’ I said, then felt embarrassed and wished I hadn’t.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I owe you my life.’
‘I didn’t do much,’ I said. Hadn’t he already thanked me?
‘Sir, but you did.’ He had not yet released my hand. ‘And your son, of course.’
‘Of course.’
‘A fine boy.’ His eyes darted towards the kitchen, and I had for a moment a sense of a man playing to the gallery. ‘He is a credit to your wife, and to you.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘What happened? Are you all right?’
He looked again towards door to the kitchen. I could hear voices, laughter. Millicent, Arla and Max were still sitting at the table. Mr Ashani leaned in close, across the threshold, still shaking my hand. He dropped his voice. ‘I must speak with you.’
‘That’s not terribly convenient,’ I said, lowering my voice to meet his. ‘Could we do it tomorrow?’
‘It is a matter of some urgency. And some delicacy.’
‘If it’s about my wife, I forgive her.’
A shrewd look passed across his features. He let go of my hand. ‘It is not about your wife. Not directly.’
He invited me loudly for a sherry, and I accepted just as loudly.
I sat waiting for Mr Ashani to return from the kitchen, worrying at a piece of nail on my right thumb, foolish and out of place. Mr Ashani’s front room was scrupulously tidy. Everything was old; everything immaculately preserved. There were few pictures; a small number of leather-bound books. A large Bible dominated the bookshelf, and a small wooden cross hung from a chain above the mantelpiece. The fireplace had been boarded up, and a small gas fire installed against the plasterboard.
I guessed Mr Ashani had bought his furniture when he moved in. It was upholstered in muted greens and blues. Clear plastic strips protected the arms of the chairs; the legs sat in shallow plastic cups; more plastic preserved the area of carpet around the door.
Mr Ashani returned with a glass, which he placed on a small table beside me. Cut crystal.
‘Aren’t you having one?’
‘Kind of you, sir, but no.’
I sat, looking at the sherry.
‘May I ask you an impertinent question, sir?’
‘Mr Ashani,’ I said, ‘it makes me uncomfortable when you call me sir.’
‘But we hardly know each other, sir.’
‘Mr Ashani, I’m sitting here, drinking your sherry. Would you please call me Alex?’
He leaned over and slammed his palm down on my knee. ‘Nice! Alex! Why not? But you must call me Emmanuel.’
‘And will you please join me in a drink?’
‘Why not?’
‘OK. Emmanuel. Thank you.’
He went back into the kitchen, and returned with another cut crystal glass, which he stroked gently as he sat, nursing it like a small and delicate animal.
‘Your good health, Alex.’
‘Cheers, Emmanuel.’
‘I am grateful for what you did, sir.’ He took an appreciative sip. ‘Exquisite.’
I said nothing. I took a slug of sherry. It was bitter, though I was certain that it was good sherry.
Mr Ashani leaned forwards and grasped my knee with his right hand, his eyes very close to mine. ‘I owe you my life, sir.’
‘I didn’t do much.’ I tried not to blink. There were small grey rings around his dark pupils. ‘It was Max who realised you’d been very quiet.’
‘A transient ischemic attack, sir.’ He relaxed his grip and sat back in his chair. ‘A mini-stroke, if you will. The doctors, they told me to avoid salt, and alcohol.’ He looked wryly at the glass in his hand. ‘But I believe the cause to be stress, so perhaps a little sherry cannot hurt. The death of our neighbour has caused me not a little distress. Now, what is it about your wife that you have forgiven?’
I said nothing.
‘You may know, Alex, that Mr Bryce was not the man he appeared to be.’ He eyed me levelly, measuring my response. I put my glass down as carefully as I could.
‘I’m aware of that.’
‘You are aware of that?’ His dark eyes were keen and alert, now; I wondered what he knew about Millicent and Bryce.
‘I found out very recently. I know that he didn’t own his house.’
‘You know about his financial embarrassment?’
‘He was trading from our address.’ And of course, he seduced my wife. That last thought lay heavy in the air, though neither of us spoke it.
‘Well,’ said Mr Ashani, ‘that is one of many things, Alex, that were not as they appeared to be.’ Mr Ashani stood up, and opened a drawer in the dresser that stood under the stairs. He produced a small pile of envelopes, which he handed to me. ‘I was of course delighted when he told me he was an architect.’
The thought surprised me. Delighted? I looked down at the envelopes. Credit-card statements, and a number of plain white envelopes. All were addressed to Mr D. Bryce.
‘One wishes to find such tenants, does one not? And when the man asked if he might make a number of small improvements – at his own expense – well, it seemed too good an offer to pass up.’
‘You own Bryce’s house?’
‘I do, sir. And when I saw the quality of the work I was rendered speechless. I assumed, foolishly I must now concede, that he was using his own money. But you hold in your hand at least £70,000 of personal debt, sir, of which £11,745 is for work on my house. Not inclusive of VAT.’
I looked down at the envelopes. They had all been neatly opened. Mr Ashani was the kind of man to own a letter knife.
‘You have a key?’
‘Of course. I made regular daytime inspections. The last was a day before his death. Check my arithmetic, sir: £70,000. That I know of. There may be more.’
I looked at the envelopes in my hand. Hadn’t Mr Ashani committed some kind of crime by taking them?
‘Take a look.’
‘I’m not sure.’
I handed the envelopes back to Mr Ashani.
‘You think I was not within my right to take them? They were lying unopened, in a cupboard. There are court orders here. Distraint proceedings.’
I didn’t know what distraint proceedings were. Something must have shown on my face, because he said, ‘Bailiffs, sir. Seizure of possessions. And I knew nothing, sir, nothing. Smiling from behind my net curtains, as if all was well, when he had not paid his rent for seven months. Seven months, sir! Big contract, he would say. Money coming soon. He played me like a fish, sir. Like a fish.’
He laughed bitterly to himself, then leaned in to me and took my arm in his. ‘The man was so plausible. So very plausible! He convinced me that he was merely suffering a temporary embarrassment, financially. He was after all an architect. He showed me contracts, sir, for buildings costing millions.’ He shuffled through the pile and selected a windowed en
velope, which he tried to hand to me. ‘This tells most of the story,’ he said. ‘About the bailiffs and the court proceedings.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That’s a line I don’t want to cross.’
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘You must do as you consider right.’ He was still holding out the envelope.
‘I do believe you,’ I said.
‘Well, well.’ He put the letters down on the table beside him. ‘After four months I was obliged to give him notice. I have a key, as I told you, and the things I found you would not believe. The man shopped at Selfridges.’ He said this as if it removed all doubt.
He must have noticed my discomfort, because he said, ‘Of course, you may say that a landlord must not spy on his tenant, and technically I was in breach of our contract, but please, sir, put yourself in my shoes. When you see that the man shops at Selfridges you know this is not a moral man. A man in arrears does not shop at this store, sir, not until he has dealt with his embarrassment. Nor Fortnum and Mason. Nor Waitrose. And yet he did. But there was never the money to pay the rent. A squatter, sir, nothing better than a squatter! And a trained architect too. Do you understand how hard it is to evict a man like that, sir? Do you?’
‘I can see it’s a problem.’
‘Alex, sir, I must ask you: what have the police asked you about me?’
‘Nothing,’ I said.
‘The police have said nothing to you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, they didn’t say anything to me about you.’
What did they ask you about us, I wanted to say. What more have you told them?
‘I am an honest man, Alex. I was driven to this. But I would never commit an act of violence of this sort. You believe me, do you not?’
‘Of course.’
‘When I bought that house it was going for a song. A song, Alex. I charge a reasonable rent. A fair market rent. And now I find, to my bemusement, that I am a millionaire. On paper. But I have no cash flow, sir, only costs. Can you imagine how difficult it is for me to live without cash flow? My pension, it doesn’t come close.’
For a moment I actually wondered if he had done it. I found myself anxiously staring at the pleats in his trousers. He clearly made regular use of an iron, and he had reasons, financial and moral, to dislike his tenant. But the thought was absurd, and I put it from my mind.
‘Why are you telling me this, Emmanuel?’
‘Who else can I tell, Alex, sir? I have no one.’ A change came upon him. The muscles in his face sagged and his shoulders dropped; he looked diminished, beaten: a seventy-seven-year-old man who lived alone and worried about the future. I reached across and put a hand on his arm. He nodded, patted it with his free hand.
‘You are lucky you have your beautiful wife. What is it that you have forgiven her for?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘She did nothing wrong.’
‘And yet you have forgiven her?’
‘Yes.’
When he showed me to the door a little later I realised he had not once mentioned God.
I went home and made calls.
My mother was finding it hard to sleep. Edinburgh was unseasonably hot and the flat was like an oven. She was all right, she said; she was getting by. She had a fan in the bedroom, but it wasn’t much use. I sensed that she did not want the call to end. But neither of us is good at smalltalk, so we spoke instead about forgiveness. My mother believed forgiveness brought relief to the person who had been wronged, more than to the wrongdoer. She wanted to speak about forgiveness as part of God’s plan for mankind. I did not.
Neither of us spoke about my father, though he hovered at the edges of our conversation like a shadow. You’re wrong, I thought, Mum. He craved your forgiveness; he never dared ask because he thought himself unforgivable.
I called my boss and apologised for calling him a cunt. I had, I explained, been under the influence of morphine at the time. I did not think he was a cunt, and deeply regretted the offence I had caused him. I did not expect him to give me my job back. It had been reasonable of him to sack me.
‘There’s something we can agree on,’ he said, and hung up.
I rang Dee. She rejected my call, so I left her a short message apologising for my lack of engagement and explaining that my family had been under a lot of pressure, that someone close to us had died, and that I deeply regretted that she and I were no longer working together.
Half an hour later Dee’s agent rang to tell me that Dee accepted my apology. She wished me well. There were no hard feelings.
Relief flooded my body; I was shocked to discover that Dee’s words could mean so much. It’s not as if we were friends.
‘Dad,’ said Max later, as we sat on his bed, ‘Dad, what did Mr Ashani tell you about Mum?’
‘Nothing, Max. That’s not what we talked about.’
‘You didn’t ask him about her?’
‘No.’
‘So what happened in Norway then?’
‘We stopped smoking. I think you’d like it there.’
‘That’s not what I meant. What did she say to you in Norway?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said you were going away to talk about what happened. But now you’re all loving again. Why didn’t you say you know the neighbour did her?’
‘It wasn’t like that. Mum knows I know about her affair.’
‘It’s like you keep forgetting, though.’
‘People make mistakes, Max.’
‘You can’t just let her get away with it.’ There were angry tears in Max’s eyes now. ‘You can’t just forgive her.’
‘Actually, I can.’
‘Why?’
‘Because bad things happen when you don’t forgive people.’
‘You think she wouldn’t have hit you with the bottle if you forgave her?’
‘Nevertheless, Max, I have forgiven her.’ I could feel a pricking in my own eyes. I swallowed hard, put thumb and forefinger to my forehead, and breathed deeply.
‘What do you want, Max? Do you want us to split up? Because the consequences if I don’t forgive her are … you know, it would be bleak.’
‘You don’t have to split up. But you shouldn’t just …’ said Max. ‘I mean, look.’
He reached into his trouser pocket, then held out to me a cheap black notebook. The cover was worn and striated. I looked down at it but didn’t take it.
‘It’s about what happened when the neighbour did Mum.’
‘A diary?’ Max nodded and pressed it into my palm. ‘Max, listen to me. Your mother made a mistake. It’s over, and I am going to forgive her. You need to understand that. I am not looking for new reasons to be angry with her. If you want me to read your diary, those are my terms.’
‘OK,’ he said, after thinking for a while. ‘I still think you should read it.’
We sat on his bed, not speaking. Max picked up a comic book. The defiance in him belonged to someone much older. ‘OK, boy-man,’ I said. ‘I will read your diary.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that.’ The slightness of that body – too small, too angular, too breakable. I ruffled his hair. He pushed me off, suppressed a smile, became serious again.
‘Max, you’re eleven,’ I said.
‘I know.’
‘For your age, you’re the most grown-up person I know.’
‘I know, Dad.’ Another suppressed smile. ‘So are you.’
‘Cheeky wee bastard,’ I said.
‘Same to you.’
At eleven I left Millicent and Arla talking downstairs. I brushed my teeth, undressed, and lay on top of the bed.
Inside the scuffed covers of Max’s diary the pages were yellowed, uneven; something seemed to have spilled and dried, fading and separating the black ink into diffuse blues and reds. I looked again at the covers and the spine. The coarse fibres were unevenly spread, stained: watermarked.
I saw now that the whole book had been wet. Max must have dried it, then prised the pages apart; he seem
ed to have gone over the faded text with a fresh pen. There were pencil drawings too which had smudged a little where the pages had rubbed against each other in his trouser pocket.
The smudging and the rewriting gave Max’s book a childish, incomplete feel. I half-closed my eyes, and the water damage and the smudges faded away. The diary became much more workmanlike: evenly spaced text, small images placed where the eye naturally fell.
A shift in the shadows on the far wall. I opened my eyes. The door was open, and Millicent was standing there watching me.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Max’s diary,’ I said.
‘That isn’t how you read a diary.’
‘I was looking at the composition.’
‘An excellent avoidance strategy.’
‘Avoidance?’
‘Yeah, that way you get to not engage with it. Do you think maybe you’ll read it and decide that you don’t forgive me for what I did?’
‘Max doesn’t want me to forgive you.’
‘Think you can read it and still forgive me?’
‘Obviously. Yes.’
‘So I was thinking I would come to bed now. But I guess Arla is planning to be up for a while. I could go downstairs again.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Lie here.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’ve forgiven you, Millicent. That’s the spirit in which I’m going to read it.’
She took off her shoes and lay on her back. ‘Alex,’ she said, ‘you’re in the process of forgiving me, which is not the same thing.’
After a time she closed her eyes. I watched her, beautiful in her white cotton shirt and black fitted skirt. I caressed her hair with my hand. Mine, I thought: I really need you to be mine.
When I was certain Millicent was asleep I began to read. Max’s diary began on the evening Bryce had seduced Millicent. Max had known instantly. He had heard her take off her shoes and lay them gently on the landing, had seen her shadow cross the gap beneath his door; he had felt as much as heard the boards as they shifted beneath her. Some permanent change in the chemical structure of the house, I thought: old bonds broken, new bonds forged.
Max had crept to the bathroom. From beneath the open window he had heard his faithless mother emerge from the kitchen into the garden, heard her feet tracking low across the uncut grass. He had heard the love seat creak as she jumped easily up on to the wall. He had heard her footfalls on the other side as she landed and walked on, there to open bottles and crack bone with next-door neighbour Bryce.
A Line of Blood Page 59