Joe leant across the table and solemnly shook Kit’s hand.
‘It works beautifully,’ he said. ‘You know how old he was then, Dickens, in October, 1838? He was twenty-six.’
‘Nearly as old as you,’ replied Kit, grinning. She kept Joe’s hand in her own, and remained like that for a few moments as she quietly enjoyed the triumph of these discoveries.
‘It really does all fit,’ she said, sitting back again. She was barely bothering to whisper any more. It was time to go, anyway. ‘N.B., Dickens, across his career, caused grave offence by copying real people into his books. What I mean is, he does have form in this respect. Looking at it dispassionately,’ she said, ‘everything we’ve put together may not constitute hard proof—’ the lights blinked on and off; Kit released Joe’s hand and they stood up to join the select and motley procession of students being forced to leave—‘but if you accept that Dickens would have known about Eliza’s death when it happened, probably in considerable and even minute detail; and bearing in mind the enormous number of points at which the real murder and the written one intersect; and given, too, that we now know that he hadn’t planned his characters’ endings before Eliza’s killing, but had within two weeks of her story running its course in the press—how easy would it be to defend him against the charge that he was copying from life? And the answer to that, friends, is, I just don’t see a convincing defence.’
They stepped into the night air of the quad.
‘I agree that this would seem to qualify as beyond all reasonable doubt.’
‘Yes, or put another way,’ said Kit, slinging her bag over her shoulder, ‘suppose merely that Dickens wanted to avoid all possibility that his writing might seem to echo Eliza’s murder, was he not unbelievably careless?’
‘No shit.’
‘You know what,’ she said—she was suddenly thinking of the dance club, of the first time she’d gone, before Joe had introduced himself to her at the bus stop—‘the inquest accounts of Eliza dead in her bedroom, that gives her in what one might call “ghost position”. That’s what Charles Field was faced with; but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t place the other body back into this scene, her partner, the figure of the murderer. Dickens, though, picturing the same scene, could. And—that’s what he decided to do. Let’s get out of here,’ said Kit. So they did.
They left the car where it was and walked all the way back to Joe’s place. ‘I’ll shift it in the morning,’ he said. He took Kit’s hand as they tramped the frosty pavements, then tucked it, with his own, into his coat pocket.
‘Do starlings migrate?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I never thought of that before.’
‘Picture starlings as classy little Russians who like to come to England for a visit.’
‘Mid-sized Russian passerines.’
‘I knew there was a reason I liked you.’
‘Not that I’m brilliant in bed?’
‘You don’t know how hopeful I am.’
She half smiled, half didn’t; let the comment—much though she had solicited it—slip away.
‘Starlings come to boring old England from Russia,’ said Joe, ‘the same way an English person might go and visit boring old Holland.’
‘Please just don’t ever say that to Saskia,’ said Kit.
‘Oh, excuse me.’
‘Not at all. I’m not from Holland. You can say what you like to me. After all, Saskia gives me bluebird pyjamas that fall off on the floor.’
‘I still think they sound great.’
As they walked up the stairs to Joe’s flat, Kit’s stomach audibly growled, so that they both laughed.
‘Let me put the heating on,’ said Joe, unlocking the door. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, distracted. He gestured at a large brown envelope on the chair by the coats. ‘Buddy asked me to give you that.’
‘What is it? It’s—?’
‘I assume it’s his war letters.’
‘Oh piss. He remembered.’
‘He said, “Now you’re chums with someone who appreciates history, Joe—”’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘And, yes, he’s coming to tea next Friday. I said I’d ask you.’
‘Gee thanks. No but seriously, I accept.’
‘Is that all right?’
‘Yes. Anything you like. You don’t think I owe you—both? Yes!’
‘I said four o’clockish, if that’s good. Thank you.’ Joe helped Kit off with her coat.
‘Don’t thank me. I’ll be here. Joe?’
He was hanging up his own coat over hers, but turned back because of a tremor in her voice.
And Kit—Kit? She felt a terrible shock of desire, was overwhelmed, slightly lifted one hand towards him, tried to speak but couldn’t, tried to breathe, stretched her quivering hand out further and—
Key in the door, Humpty came in, sauntered in, ‘—had some message, but when he saw it was me—told me to tell you he’d tell you another time, yes? I think he’s gone off me, old Buddykins. Oh. Hello, Kit. You look ill.’
It was the second time Kit had seen Joe flinch. With difficulty, he dredged up a response. ‘He’s probably gone off you because you threw up on his landing.’
Humpty shrugged. ‘In my world,’ he said, ‘everyone’s vomiting something.’
The three of them stood in uncomfortable proximity, Kit and Joe effectively barring Humpty’s way.
‘Cup of tea?’ said Joe mockingly.
‘No thanks.’
‘Actually, I might go,’ said Kit. She stooped to pick up Buddy’s envelope.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Humpty. ‘Don’t run away. I’m not going to be sick on you. I have got headlice, though; had a date with a girl from up the U-Bend, single mother. Hey, Joe, I did what you said, pastures new, and now I’ve got fucking headlice. I keep seeing lone magpies,’ he said, ‘even in Milan, through gritted fucks.’ He slung his coat across the hall chair. ‘The magpie, it’s this shitty bird that goes about by itself of—of its normal processes, is it? Or, they usually go in pairs? The odds are stacked in your favour or not, for seeing two of them, I mean? Magpies. So I keep seeing “one for sorrow”, I’m completely screwed? Or, what, the odds are against me anyway?’
‘Pass,’ said Joe.
Humpty wiped his nose on the back of his hand, then took a deep breath. ‘Are magpies these, you know, evil, lonely little shits, or what?’ he asked, sounding, now, agitated. ‘I’m saying, the odds are stacked against? Or you see just one and you’re really really screwed, because the magpie normally never flies alone?’
‘Humpty,’ said Joe, flattening himself against the wall, ‘enough, all right? Enough. Go in the kitchen. I’ll fix you up something to eat, you can tell me about Milan.’
‘This is serious orthin—this—a serious orthinologi—Joe, you know what they’re on about down The Forfeit?’
‘No.’
‘Oil Man’s Finger Bingo.’ Humpty laughed emptily, and then hissed the answer a second time, ‘Oil Man’s Finger Bingo. I hear you were down there with some tall old git?’
Joe turned to Kit, his face closed and angry. She had extracted her coat and was already putting it back on again.
‘Yes, well, see you,’ she said, giving Humpty a formulaic wave as, ushered out by his brother, she left the flat.
‘He’s back,’ she whispered on the stairs.
‘Kit,’ said Joe, also quietly, ‘we should—this is too much. I thought he was back tomorrow. I’m sorry I haven’t fed you.’
‘No less I haven’t fed you,’ she replied.
‘No, but I’m sorry. He’s not in a good way. They treat him like a mascot, Dean, their tame nutter. But something’s going on—Milan. I don’t know. I’m so sick of it,’ he said, ‘so sick of it. I worry he’s going to get himself killed, and then I dream about killing him myself.’ They reached the front door. Joe leant against the wall, the force seeping out of him, and shut his eyes, pale and disturbed. ‘A bottle factory
isn’t going to do it,’ he said, not unkindly, ‘but,’ his eyes flew open again, ‘I’ve got to get him out of here. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t just wish this away.’
‘It isn’t only drugs?’ said Kit at a venture.
Joe made a gesture as though he hardly knew where to begin.
‘We have friends, back home, my family knows a family where the son is—Graham knows them better than I do, Anthony. I mean, he’s done time in prison under the Mental Health Act, or, I don’t know how it works but, I do have a small idea how draining it is for everyone else if—’
Joe said, ‘Yes. That’s okay. That’s fine.’
‘I didn’t mean to—’ Kit searched for how to express herself, ‘compare or anything, whether Humpty is, as it were—I mean, I’m just saying because of what you said.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘No, that was all.’
‘Kit,’ said Joe, ‘I’d like to see more of you.’
In an attempt to lift his mood, she replied saucily, ‘I thought you’d seen pretty much everything already.’
‘I’m absolutely certain I haven’t,’ he said.
There was the sound of a crash upstairs.
‘I guess I’d better be off.’
Joe took hold of her and kissed her goodbye as though this might be the last time, so hard she almost struggled against it, the side of her lip made sore.
And indeed, as she stepped out over the threshold into the ever-colder night, away from all the turmoil of his house, she felt she could as well have been boarding a train for Baden-Baden, or Moscow, or Finisterre.
‘In here,’ Michaela yelled. ‘You didn’t stay over—again?’
Kit pictured herself filling up the bucket from the housekeeping cupboard with icy water and pouring it on Michaela’s head. She stood, tensed, in the kitchen doorway. ‘So what?’ she said, her teeth clenched tightly together.
‘Nothing to say to each other?’ said Michaela.
Kit rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself up. ‘He was unavoidably detained,’ she remarked blackly.
‘Right, right,’ said Michaela, ‘his brother. I know, you told me. But it’s crap. I’m sure it’s crap.’
‘Is that so?’ said Kit. ‘You just know it?’
‘It’s so so,’ said Michaela, with a toss of the hair.
‘So-so?’
‘No, it’s so “so”. It so is so.’
‘I mean, if you don’t talk English, I can’t understand you.’
‘Go stuff yourself then,’ said Michaela. ‘But, Kit, look, listen to yer old mucker, please, okay? I mean, God, if I looked like you, fuck me, I’d use it. And you knock around with these people like you’re a—Kit, why do you think you like him, seriously? Why?—because he makes out like he likes you. I’m not saying it’s the worst thing ever. Lots of people behave like that, especially girls, I hate to say. All right. But if that’s what it is, then the issue becomes, why does he like you, and how much really? Are you listening to me? Because, without wishing to be truly offensive, I can tell that he’s taking you for a ride. How much do you really know about him?’
‘Like what?’
‘You see?’ said Michaela, jabbing at the table. ‘That answers my question right there. What, he’s the strong, silent type, you’re going to say? Man of mystery crap bollocks?’
‘Honestly, Michaela—’
‘Because, pardon me, but did you know he’s leaving?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oxford.’
‘What?’
‘You heard. He’s leaving.’
Kit, without having any reason to, immediately believed this. ‘No he isn’t,’ she said.
‘I think you’ll find he is. I asked a friend about him in the maths department. He said, “Oh yes, I know Joe Leppard. He’s quitting at Christmas. He’s been poached to work on this government project thing. It’s all happened last minute and now they’re having to find someone to step into his shoes”.’
‘That can’t be right,’ said Kit.
‘Just listen,’ said Michaela. ‘Listen to me, Kit. Live-and-learn only works if you don’t end up in the bloody gutter. I bet—I mean, I bet you aren’t the only girl he has on the go. He’s not that special or anything, but I just bet. When they don’t say much, you make it all up for them. I know this. I know a piss artist when I see one. You don’t believe me, but the good-looking ones are—they’re—Kit, men are twats,’ said Michaela, weeping, ‘they’re cunts,’ she said—she cried, ‘Have you still not figured it out that I’m fucking pregnant?’
CHAPTER 7
‘By whom?’
‘An irrelevance, she says.’
‘Maybe to her.’ Joe unwrapped a Battenberg cake from the Co-op. ‘He is the father.’
‘Of a teaspoonful of ashes, it’ll be, soon enough, I’m afraid.’ Kit sighed, pulled a chair out and sat down at Joe’s kitchen table. ‘In all the time I’ve known her, she’s—well, it doesn’t matter. But, Joe, she’s asked me if I’ll go with her next week to some clinic in London, next Friday, in fact. I feel quite ill about it, but she’s several weeks gone already. She could go longer, but yuk, it’s all so unpleasant. I was reading this thing just the other day about subsequent prematurity, amongst mothers who abort?’
Joe, laying out the tea things, glanced at Kit from time to time as she spoke. When she had arrived at his door, the sight of him, his presence, had made her blush, and he had leant round carefully and kissed her on the cheek.
‘I think it’s because I’m not really a close friend of hers. I mean I sort of am, but not really; or by circumstances more, which in a way is more like family, isn’t it, who you’re stuck with?’ Kit began to play with the knife Joe had placed by her tea plate. ‘Of course, she and I do have a bit of history now, or witness, I suppose; but what I mean is, because I’m not tied into her social loop, I think that’s why it’s me she’s asked, basically—so the whole thing can just go away when it’s over. No one she seriously cares about will know, sort of thing. Frankly, I can’t think of anything I’d like to do less, especially on a Friday, you know? And she acted like I should have worked it all out already. But how could I? She’s not sticking out or anything. God, Joe,’ Kit put the knife back down, ‘I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone and now I’ve just gone and told it all to you, oh dear. What am I doing?’
‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I don’t count. Who am I going to tell? You haven’t told anyone else, have you?’
‘No, no. God, no. No, and I wouldn’t have told you unless I trusted you, I just—trusted you without stopping to think about it. Thank you, by the way. I know this is completely unimportant by comparison, but the business of her picking on me all the time, what I told you last week, I’m guessing now, well—that I was simply the most convenient person she could get cross with, so to speak.’
‘Doesn’t she have a boyfriend, in the Amazon, you said?’
‘I know, I know. I said to her, “What about Greg?” And she said, “Greg? Who cares? I thought you didn’t believe in him, anyway. And anyway, he’s probably having it away with some kind of tropical rainforest gorilla”. And she said—about the putative father, the father not-to-be, in case you’re interested—she said that although he’s beneath contempt, well, guess what, she despises him massively anyway.’
Joe grimaced.
‘But this morning,’ Kit couldn’t keep the sorrow out of her voice, ‘this morning, after all, she said she wasn’t so sure what she was doing. All week we’ve been having these dreadful breakfasts and she suddenly said she wasn’t quite sure she’d made up her mind to do it, and I said, she must just let me know, I would drop anything if she needed me. And she just said, “Well, mustn’t grumble.” Mustn’t grumble! So I don’t really know what’s going on at this point. You know, she talks about population control, for environmental reasons. She says, “Tell me where’s the cake for the Third World: this is a nation of seventy million Marie Antoinettes.” And then—’<
br />
Kit trailed away, remembering a conversation she’d had with Michaela the previous Tuesday evening; not a conversation so much as a one-sided outburst, during which Kit had started to wonder whether she perhaps had a duty to intervene—though how?—because Michaela had said, ‘Listen to me,’ increasingly desperate, ‘you don’t understand, I went in with my sister when she had her baby. Her husband was still in Germany. The whole thing was sick. Honest to goodness, she screamed so much she was hoarse for three days, and after the actual birth I had to go out and get her cough syrup and pad things and crap knows, things for leaking breasts, and she’d got torn down there, ripped up, and, and—he came out early so she hadn’t got all the stuff she needed, she’d been so laid-back about it. That’s why Andrew was in Germany, because the baby wasn’t due for three more weeks. So I went to the shops and everywhere was packed. And the whole time, that afternoon, it was like nowhere was the same place it was before, and I had this—this horrendous vision that every person in the crowd had, themselves, also been through this absolute horror of being born, and that, give or take a bit of medication, all of them, every single human being pressing in on me, each one of them had started their life in the beginning with their mother screaming and screaming like it’s the end of the entire world. I saw all these people with their mothers’ screams attached to them, I can’t explain it, like the most horrendous horror movie ever made. I mean,’ Michaela had started trembling, ‘isn’t it wrong?—that we can go around and do this insane thing?—of making other human beings, from scratch? Don’t you think? Honestly? Because I think it’s appalling. We’re all appalling. Everyone’s appalling.’
The Twisted Heart Page 19