The Twisted Heart

by Rebecca Gowers

  He held the photocopy away from him, then brought it back close, reading out more. ‘“I have altered my opinion since the first holding of the inquest as to the infliction of the wound at the back of the neck. I at first supposed that the injury was inflicted first, because I considered after the extensive wound in the front of the neck the murderer would have had no object in inflicting the second; but now I am of a different opinion, and I think that the wound in the back of the neck was perpetrated after that in the throat, for the purpose of severing the head from the body”—Kit,’ said Joe, ‘a beheading?’

  ‘Are you actually asking me about it?’ All week she had been struggling to make her thesis introduction sound lofty and judicious, but that morning, unpersuaded by her own efforts, and bored by this self-imposed task, she had fallen off the straight and narrow path, so beguiled by what she’d chosen to do instead that she had managed to miss the day’s ‘Best of British’ at the Phoenix, Performance, not a film she knew.

  ‘This is to do with your DPhil, is it?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Maybe slightly, a bit. It’s a curious case, hugely famous at the time, an unsolved murder. It’s pretty interesting, actually. I’ve just been working on it today.’

  ‘Yes?’

  She sat back down on the bed, freesias abandoned. ‘Okay, well, that piece of paper in your hand gives the details of a second post mortem on the body of a prostitute, Eliza Grimwood, murdered in Waterloo, London, 1838, off the Waterloo Road. The actual terrace doesn’t exist any more. It was a slum back then. Basically, she was killed a couple of minutes’ walk from where you’d be sitting if you were at a concert in the Festival Hall.’

  As Joe seemed perfectly attentive, Kit carried on, though she was mostly now rehearsing these facts for herself. ‘She was found a little before dawn on the floor beside her bed, toppled over backwards from a kneeling position with a blanket half thrown over her. The medical witnesses hedged about a bit, as you were reading, but came to the conclusion that she’d been killed by having her throat slashed open. She was also stabbed in the breast and the womb area, but not until after she was dead, they thought, you’ll see where it—’ Kit jumped up and leant over to point at one of the sections she had highlighted, then read it out to confirm what she was saying: ‘“There was no effusion of blood from these wounds, and they were inflicted after death”, equals, I guess, psychotic kind of stuff—I mean, they reckoned these further mutilations were severe enough that they themselves would have done her in if she hadn’t been dead already.’ As Kit sat down again, she realised that she wasn’t feeling quite so awkward, and wondered whether Joe had asked her about her work with this in mind. ‘Added to which,’ she said, catching up with herself, ‘as you were just reading, the murderer then attempted to cut her head off. The Times said—its first adjective, or rather, adverb, on the case—that she had been killed “inhumanly”, which makes you wonder what “human” means, in a way.’

  ‘Sounds a bit Jack-the-Ripperish,’ said Joe.

  ‘Absolutely. I quite agree. Although that was decades later. But I mean, yes. And her room was drenched in blood. There was blood all over the floor, and it was splashed across the walls four feet from the corpse, presumably because of how her throat was cut, or so they reckoned.’ These were the gruesome details Dickens had judged too sordid for his family journal; and it was in poring over them that Kit had spent many absorbing hours of her day.

  ‘Where does this fit in with your work?’

  It was a fair question. ‘I don’t know,’ Kit replied gaily, then felt stupid. ‘No, it’s just that—’ She halted, retrenched, and said, ‘Please tell me what it is you do.’

  Joe put the piece of paper back down in its place amidst the chaos on the floor. ‘I work for the university.’

  ‘I know, you said that last time.’

  She watched him as he weighed up whether or not to answer properly.

  ‘I’m a lecturer,’ he said.

  ‘A lecturer?’ She was astonished.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In?’

  ‘Maths.’

  They both paused now while she took this in. She clasped her hands together, then let go again. ‘You’re a maths fellow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A don?’

  ‘Yes.

  She shook her head, almost indignant at having been so completely misled—even if by her own imagination—admin?—though perhaps it was more accurate to say that she hadn’t been led anywhere much at all. Whatever; she felt completely fooled. He was a lecturer? At the university?

  ‘What did you think I did?’

  She couldn’t say, so she lifted up her shoulders in a shrug and then just held them like that.

  ‘Well, now you know.’

  Now she knew, yes. ‘Is there any use my asking you what you work on?’ she said, trying to control herself. He bore no relation to her image of a mathematician.

  ‘You can ask,’ he replied. ‘My research isn’t in good shape right now. I’ve got what feels like an unmanageable teaching load this term, which is denting my will to live, frankly, compounded by the fact that I’ve just started giving a course of Part C lectures on algebraic geometry.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kit. If only Michaela had still been there. Michaela, who was a physicist, might have understood. ‘What—’ Kit rued being so very ignorant, ‘what—what subjects would that cover?’

  ‘The lectures? Algebraic curves; affine and projective varieties; the Zariski topology; applications of the Riemann–Roch Theorem—’ Joe broke off with a sardonic smile.

  ‘I see.’ Affine and projective varieties. So, affine and projective varieties, yes. Into the tense quiet that followed, Kit said, ‘You’ll have to forgive me.’

  ‘Consider yourself forgiven.’ He smiled at her again, more gently. ‘I’m no great shakes at it,’ he said. ‘I’m nothing special. I’m about as good as ordinary gets, put it that way. I inhabit a dusty little corner of what the Americans call the “ivory basement”.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re being modest,’ said Kit. She thought about what she had done that day, and said, ‘I don’t think I’m up some ivory tower either, you know, although maybe I am, viewed from the outside. It feels more like I’m at an ivory horror show.’ She was groping for a way to neuter this remark, when Joe took her aback by asking, ‘Do you mind being tall?’

  ‘No,’ she replied doubtfully. ‘The great thing is that it works as a disguise. People think, oh, that tall girl—and then they don’t think anything more about it. So even though you stick out, or especially because you stick out—what I mean is, because you seem to stick out, you can hide away inside and people just don’t think about you. And it’s good when you travel. The sorts of countries where Western women are, are—’

  Joe’s mobile had begun to ring loudly in his pocket. He fumbled for it. ‘Hi,’ he said, then listened to the person the other end babble. ‘What’s—’ He shot his watch out from under his sleeve and frowned at it. Kit glanced at her radio clock. If there was any thought, she shrivelled, whatsoever, thought of them catching the Intermediate class, they had dwindling leeway now, unless they were going to take a cab, or Joe had a car. He was a don, a maths lecturer, a grown-up. She was still astonished. It could be he had a car.

  The person on the phone, a man, sounded keen, pressing. ‘It’ll have to be quick,’ Joe said. He looked at his watch again, brow lowered. ‘Yes, I did—I have. I’m with her right now. All right, all right,’ he said irritably. ‘Yes, no, I’m not—Humpty? Okay, bye.’

  He lifted his annoyed gaze to meet Kit’s concerned one. ‘I have to drop in at The Forfeit,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  Joe stood up. ‘What do you think of Lucille?’ He looked at his mobile, then put it in his pocket.

  ‘Lucille? Do you mean Michaela?’

  ‘The dance instructor.’

  ‘Oh, right, sorry. Yes. Well, she’s great.’ Kit felt acutely ill-at-ease. She didn’t want to have to go to
the dance club ever again. ‘She’s very shouty, though,’ she said. ‘I mean, she never stops. I find her teaching method a bit odd.’

  ‘It’s more than odd,’ said Joe. ‘I don’t think she has any formal training. I’m not sure it’s even real steps, but I do like her.’ He stepped towards the door. ‘You coming?’

  As they went down the stairs, Kit asked, ‘Who’s Humpty?’

  ‘My brother. What were you saying—if you’re tall, when you travel?’

  ‘If—? Oh, yes, countries where Western women are pestered in the streets. I guess—I mean the ones I’ve been to, they’re also countries where the men are dreadfully short. I once said to a man in Egypt, “If you carry on like that, I’m going to spit on your head.” And I could have done. And he went away.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘I know, idiotic of me, but I’d had enough. Fucking hell. Lucky by sheer chance he wasn’t a spit fetishist or something.’

  ‘Carry on like what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said you said, “If you carry on like that, I’ll spit on your head.”’

  ‘Oh, you know, he wanted me to have a drink with him, and I’d learned a bit of swearing in Arabic, so I swore at him in Arabic and he said, “Not only are you beautiful, but you speak Arabic!” They always tell you you’re beautiful. It’s depressing.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It makes you feel as though you don’t exist.’

  ‘You just told me the advantage of being tall was that it stopped people thinking about you.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, I did.’

  Kit walked along the street slightly behind Joe, kicking at the leaves that had started, that week, to fall. Though it had been Joe himself who’d been making her feel claustrophobic, this had left her with a compelling wish to get out of her room. Of course, by staying put she could have evaded whatever was to come; but she hadn’t had the grit to do it, to say ‘no’, so now the dismal business of no, still remained, presumably.

  At least she was outside, however, added to which, despite herself, she felt somewhat intrigued.

  ‘We won’t be long,’ said Joe.

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘You know The Forfeit? I usually meet him there on a Friday, that’s why—’ he sighed. ‘It won’t take any time.’

  ‘That’s fine. Whatever you like.’

  As they strode along, they descended into talking about their colleges, how good the food was or wasn’t in hall, how and where they worked, the exact nature of their workloads, Kit feeling more and more like driftwood.

  She had been past The Forfeit often enough, and could summon to mind its front window, which was frosted and ornamentally etched; but the glass was all she had ever noticed about it. This was her first time inside. There was sawdust sprinkled on the rough plank floor, which she took to be an affectation, while the pictures on the walls showed bombers and fighter planes from the Second World War.

  ‘Humpty,’ said Joe, and gestured palm upwards to a skinny but appealing-looking young man on a bench against the back wall. His clothing was trashed. He had black, curly hair. Joe rested a hand on Kit’s shoulder. ‘This is Kit,’ he said.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Humpty.

  Kit pulled out the stool in front of her, but then hesitated because Joe hadn’t moved.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Humpty again. He smelled of cigarettes. When Kit had first arrived in Oxford, before the law changed, she had particularly liked tobacco in the air in pubs, late afternoon. She hadn’t been a passive passive-smoker, but on purpose had sat close to people who were smoking.

  Joe checked his watch again, then darted a look at her. ‘You’d like something?’

  She had no idea what was going on, but grasped that this was an unexpected opportunity to waste time. If there was any chance it would make dancing impossible, then—‘Yes,’ she replied.

  To Humpty, Joe said, ‘Be normal, all right?’

  ‘Who’s normal?’ asked Humpty; or perhaps, ‘Whose normal?’ Kit wasn’t sure.

  Joe shook his head and went to the bar.

  ‘What do you think of the war?’ said Humpty.

  Kit now sat down. ‘The war?’ she said. Humpty was staring off past her with great intensity. The war? Kit thought. The war? Which one? What kind?

  ‘I think there ought to be a law passed that says, next time a prime minister takes this country to war, as soon as the first British soldier’s killed, the prime minister’s taken straight to hospital and has his legs surgically removed.’

  He had a kind of twitch, Kit saw, and his mouth was never quite still.

  ‘Make them think twice about sending other people to fight,’ Humpty said. ‘If you’re the British prime minister and a British soldier’s killed because you sent him to war, your legs get removed. Of course, don’t get me wrong, there’d be a state funeral, for the legs.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Definitely. Come on, massive. If there was a state funeral for the prime minister’s legs, wouldn’t you go? I’d go. Massive state funeral, for the prime minister’s legs?’

  ‘What if an enemy soldier’s killed?

  Humpty looked sage. ‘For every single as-they-say “enemy” soldier killed by as-they-say “our forces”, the prime minister has to go to the parade ground outside Buckingham Palace and execute a horse.’

  ‘Himself? By hand?’

  ‘Yes, himself. Execute a horse, in public, outside Buckingham Palace, for each guy on the other side who’s killed.’

  ‘Well well, that would cause a fuss,’ said Kit.

  Humpty’s twitch got slightly worse. ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘No, I get it. Make that cows, and you could help out with the TB problem. Or how about condemned attack dogs?’

  ‘Human beings divide into two kinds,’ said Humpty, ‘those who have certain knowledge they’re going to die soon, and those who don’t.’

  ‘Whether, in fact, they’re going to or not,’ replied Kit.

  This was simply a joining-in sort of a remark, but Humpty shook his head in jittery fashion so as to convey to her that she had inelegantly amplified a statement that had been clear enough already.

  Kit wanted to shout, ‘Stop twitching’—to see if it would work.

  ‘How did you meet Joe?’ Humpty asked, as Joe came back with a pint for himself and a half of something for Kit—shandy, she discovered, a drink she greatly disliked. She took a large mouthful anyway.

  ‘At a dance club?’ she said, not pleased to have the subject raised.

  Joe sat down on the bench. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘someone once told me this thing, that you can’t really dance until you can dance superbly on a brick.’

  ‘What if the person who tells you things, who you can’t remember who said it—if it’s the same person,’ said Humpty. ‘I mean, what if it’s the same person for everyone. There’s this one person who goes round telling us all these things, who has this special quality that, you can’t remember who they are. I’m talking like the Sandman, or Wee Willie Winkie, who, they have this thing that they can reach everybody, but with this person, the special thing is, you can’t remember who they are. Wouldn’t it be great to be that unrememberable person who says rememberable things? And it’s your job that you have to go round saying things to people like, “You can’t dance properly till you can dance on a brick”, or, “Everyone has a bird’s eye view of the stars”.’

  Kit, assuming that not much was expected of her, found it in a way cosy to be sitting in a pub, Friday, late afternoon, with two brothers, having a drink and a chat; saw herself, in this way, as a person who had something to do and friends to do it with. ‘It would be quite a responsibility,’ she said, mentally answering her last thought with the observation that, far from them being her friends, frankly, to her they were nobodies. She tried out a smile that promised more than she knew how to deliver, a sort of a smile that she saw often in the movies. ‘My mind is—’

  ‘No—’ speakin
g over the top of her, Humpty said, ‘—no, no—’

  ‘—infested with all sorts of—’

  ‘—no, this would have to be a life for someone completely irresponsible,’ he said, talking her down.

  Kit took another swallow of the shandy.

  ‘The person no one can remember,’ said Joe, ‘who tells us memorable things, is the brother of the angel who dances on people’s graves.’

  Humpty looked entranced by this suggestion, unless it was that he looked as though he’d been caught out. ‘Bet it was Evalina,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘It was Evalina,’ said Joe.

  ‘Evalina.’ Humpty closed his eyes. ‘Talk about dancing—’

  Kit pictured the minutes ticking away. She didn’t want to dance. The thought of being asked to dance again as the boy—even the thought demoralised her. If this was what Joe had in mind, she would absolutely refuse. ‘You know what makes seraphim different from other kinds of angels?’ she said.

  Humpty’s eyes flew open again. ‘What?’

  ‘They’re the lightest.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I learned that at school.’

  ‘Humpty and I learned dancing,’ said Joe. ‘Our headmaster was about a hundred and considered it essential.’

  ‘Two Rottweilers, he has,’ said Humpty, jiggling his knee.

  After a pause, Kit said, ‘He who?’

  ‘Guy who runs this place. Joe and me are convinced he keeps a woman locked away upstairs dressed in a WAAF uniform. Nothing new under the sun,’ said Humpty, before topping this platitude with the conspiratorial observation, ‘—apart from all the new stuff, that is.’