by Simon Mawer
Thomas hurries to the lift and descends to the ground floor. There is no sign of Kale in the reception area. He goes out to the concourse. Two students are handing out leaflets protesting against the poll tax. A couple of tourists are seated on a bench, consulting a map that is folded to the wrong page. People come and go. One of them – a colleague in the Department of Philosophy – greets him as he passes. But there is no sign of Kale, and no man who might have been talking to her, no man called Steve. He returns to the seventh floor and as he passes the offices the secretary calls out to him. ‘That Kale Macintosh left this for you.’ She is holding out some handwritten sheets of paper: an essay, due in two days ago.
‘Where did she go?’
‘She just handed it to me and went back down.’
‘The lifts must have crossed.’
The woman regards him with dry amusement. She is an ally of sorts. ‘Ships in the night,’ she says.
Back in his office he glances through the essay. Her handwriting is naive and laborious, with painstakingly looped characters. The letter T is frequently capitalized; in place of a dot, the i always bears a small circle like a little o of surprise. History should be Telling iT like iT was, she writes. This is whaT The German historian Ranke meanT when he said, Wie es eigentlich gewesen – we must show It like It was. Some people Think This is wrong, but iT seems To me quiTe righT.
He feels a surge of affection. And fear. Suddenly she no longer appears the assured, confident woman that he has taken her to be: quite unexpectedly she seems like a vulnerable child.
Of course, Telling iT like iT was is also understanding iT like iT was, and This may be very difficult …
*
Dear Dr Denham
Thank you for your enquiry regarding Major D. Braudel of the 2nd battalion, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. I have looked through the regimental diary for the period you mention, and although the diary does not as a rule mention individuals by name, I do find a reference to this officer in the entry for Wednesday 14th May, 1958. I quote it, in its entirety, below:
‘Major Braudel, CO D Coy, murdered, probably by Eoka, while off duty in Limassol.’
If you wish for further details of this officer’s career I suggest you get in touch with the Army Records Office which holds all individual records of service. I must warn you, however, that such information is usually only released to the individual in question or to immediate relatives.
Yours sincerely,
Trotter, J. Lt Col. (retd).
Curator, Museum of Ox & Bucks L.I.
‘What do you want?’ Kale asks. She stands in the middle of his office, biting the inside of her lip. Today she looks about sixteen. Sometimes she looks tough and grown-up, a good thirty or more. Other times she seems little more than an adolescent. She even changes her gait, her way of standing. Today it’s a short, sharp skirt and heavy shoes and her knees turned inwards. Pigeon-toed. She’s wearing one of those shirts that looks crumpled even when it’s not.
‘I just want to return your essay,’ Thomas explains. ‘And to see you alone for a bit.’
‘People’ll get suspicious if you call me in like this. Eric already says I won’t have any problem with my grades, if I play my cards right.’
‘Eric’s a silly prat.’
She takes the essay from him and glances over it. He has scribbled a few comments in the margin, and marked it at the end. ‘What’s that mean? Fifteen out of twenty-five. What’s that?’
‘It means it’s not bad, for a first attempt.’
‘What do you mean, not bad? I can’t do any better than that. I can’t help it if I can’t write. It’s not my fault.’
‘You’ll get better. With practice.’
‘I haven’t got time for practice.’
‘I want to see more of you,’ he says. ‘I want a bit of practice as well.’
She shrugs. ‘It’s not easy, is it? There’s Emma. There’s my work. There’s other stuff.’
What other stuff, he wonders? ‘Who was it you were arguing with the other day? I was looking out of the window and I saw you on the concourse. With a man. Was that him?’
She shrugs. ‘Maybe. Maybe it was.’
‘I thought you’d finished with him.’
‘He wants me back, doesn’t he?’ Her tone suggests that Thomas ought to know, that it’s obvious.
‘And what about you?’
‘I want to be left in peace, don’t I?’
‘By me as well?’
‘Maybe … maybe not.’
He takes her hand. He expects her to snatch it away, but she doesn’t. She lets it lie there, fragile and cool, like a small mammal lying passive in a cage. And then he notices the bruise. It’s on her wrist, a luminous grey-blue mark like a tattoo, a pretty enough thing really, an abstract shape curling cleverly round the narrow bones.
‘What’s this?’
She looks, almost with surprise. ‘I fell. Bashed it against a cupboard.’
‘Come on, Kale, I’m not naive.’
‘I fell. Why don’t you believe me?’
He takes her other hand and examines that, but the skin is unblemished. ‘Was it him?’
She doesn’t stop him when he unbuttons her cuff and pushes the sleeve up. There are other marks, blue marks, on her upper arm. Bile yellow and a hint of rust. ‘What you going to do? Examine me all over?’
‘You haven’t answered the question.’
She is silent, like a child caught out in some misdemeanour and unable to concoct an excuse or an alibi.
‘That’s enough of an answer, isn’t it?’
‘It’s nothing.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Pushed me about a bit. The usual stuff.’
‘Usual stuff? Has he done this before?’
‘Sometimes. He gets carried away. Angry. He gets angry.’
‘Why don’t you do something about it? Go to the police or something.’
That brings dry, sarcastic laughter. ‘For this? Fuck all they’d do. Probably just use it as an excuse to send the social workers round and take Emma away. Look, we’re all right, OK? Me and Emma, we’ve moved in with my mum and now we’re all right.’
‘Where were you before?’
She hesitates, evades his look, bites her lip. ‘With Steve, of course. I was living with him.’
‘You never said that.’
‘Why should I? I didn’t leave him because of you, if that’s what you’re thinking. We were breaking up anyway, and you came along, and that’s OK. But I didn’t walk out on him because of you.’
He has a thought. More than one thought in fact; a dozen, all fighting for his attention, like a roomful of students all clamouring their questions at the same time. Focus, he tells them. Reason calmly. Work from premises to conclusions, taking one line of argument at a time. He chooses the first thought that floats to the surface: ‘How long had you been with him?’
‘Couple of years.’
‘How long is a couple?’
She shifts evasively. ‘Four.’
‘Four? ’
‘Four or five, something like that.’
‘Five years living with him? I thought he was just a casual boyfriend.’
She shrugs and looks away but he takes her chin and turns her head towards him. She’s pale, and her eyebrows have that ill-plucked look about them. Her mouth is twisted as she bites the inside of her lower lip. For the first time her eyes don’t hold his.
‘Kale, is Steve Emma’s father?’
‘Steve? You’re joking.’
‘I’m just doing a bit of maths, that’s all.’
‘Well, you’re a better historian than a mathematician. She’s six years old. It doesn’t add up, does it?’
‘In history the maths often doesn’t quite add up. That’s because the witnesses are often inaccurate.’
There’s a flash of anger. ‘Are you saying I’m lying?’
‘Approximating, maybe.’
&n
bsp; ‘If you’re interested, I don’t even know who her father is. I was having a bad time then, seeing a lot of guys, in a bit of a mess. Know what I mean? And Steve sort of got me out of that, gave me something to rely on. Look, can I go now?’
‘If that’s what you want.’ But he’s still holding her hand and she doesn’t make a move. Cautiously he draws her towards him. There’s even a faint response as he kisses her, an offering of her mouth. He can smell the sweetness of something she has been sucking – strawberry, perhaps – and the sourness of tobacco behind it. She moves against him, faintly at first, then with a strange insistence. Anger has done something, opened the door to reconciliation. He can feel her hip bone nudged against his thighs. She backs against the desk and papers cascade on to the floor with the sound of snow sliding from a roof. He lifts her on to the desk, pushes her skirt up, opens her legs.
At that moment there’s a knock on the door.
They pause, suddenly silent. ‘Who is it?’ she whispers in his ear.
‘Shh.’
A second knock. Is it possible to hear someone listening? There is a sensation of sound inverted, like a vacuum sucking the faintest noise from the room into the funnel of an ear on the other side of the door. Kale laughs softly, pressed close to him, her mouth by his ear. ‘Is it locked?’
‘Shh.’
They wait for the tap of footsteps retreating along the corridor. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘God, how bloody awful.’
She’s still laughing. ‘Is it locked?’
‘Of course it’s locked.’
‘You dirty old bugger. You were planning to fuck me, weren’t you?’
‘The idea had crossed my mind.’
‘I’ll bet.’ The moment of possibility has gone. She jumps off the desk and turns away to find her bag. ‘Well, I think I’d better be going before they come back with an axe and break the door down.’
‘Come away with me,’ he suggests. ‘Next weekend. I’ve got to look someone up in Brighton. Brighton’s just as good as Frinton. Better. Better than Frinton.’
She hesitates at the door. ‘What about Emms?’
‘Bring her as well. Of course.’
She bites her lip, considering. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘Why not?’
‘Are you in a relationship with Ms Macintosh?’ asks one of his colleagues. They are in the canteen, bathed in bright, fluorescent light like in an operating theatre. There is the clash of metal on metal, as though someone is doing battle in the stainless-steel kitchens beyond the serving counter. Other colleagues – friends, sympathizers – carefully avoid their table, as though the subject of the interrogation is already known to all. Was this, Thomas wonders, the prowler in the corridor, knocking while he and Kale were about to knock?
‘That all depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On why you are asking me. On what you mean by a relationship.’
‘It’s not really a semantic issue, is it? Nothing to do with COGESH. It’s rather more than that. An issue for Staff–Student Relations.’
‘It’s not an issue of any kind. Kale is twenty-eight years old and a mother. She doesn’t need a watchdog to look after her.’
There is an academic shake of the head. A prim smile. ‘Neither her age nor her maternity is the point. The new code of conduct expressly prohibits associations of an intimate nature between junior and senior members of the college when a direct mentorial or pedagogic relationship already exists. We are attempting to establish the same kind of professional relationship that you might expect between doctors and their patients.’
Thomas smiles back. He’s feeling the exultation of conquest, daring and dangerous. ‘Then you’ll just have to catch us at it, won’t you?’
Geoffrey Crozier lives in that no man’s land between the celebrated Brighton and the unknown Hove. He has a flat in a building called Tatham House, a Regency confection of white plasterwork on the seafront. In the town itself there are souvenir shops selling trinkets to tourists and language schools selling English to ravenous packs of Italian and Spanish kids; but here, on Regent’s Square, it is all pillars and Corinthian capitals and swags of florid vegetation: Brighton Rock has given way to Wedding Cake.
A rickety cage of fin de siècle ironwork edges Thomas upwards from the ground floor towards the penthouse. It gives the curious illusion that the cage is stationary while the stairs and landings are sliding downwards past him, potted palms and closed doors descending into the depths. A resident, caught at the moment of watering, watches this apotheosis suspiciously. The lift comes to a halt in the manner of machinery breaking down rather than something reaching its programmed destination. The gate folds back, like an umbrella collapsing.
There are two doors here on the topmost floor but only one of them is open, and there – it’s a shock – is Geoffrey Crozier himself, standing in the opening with his arms held out as though Thomas might throw himself into them like a prodigal son. ‘Tom!’ he cries. ‘Tom, me old shiner, come in, come in!’
There is something immaculate about Geoffrey’s appearance, something cultured and perfect. Dapper, Thomas’ mother used to say; a word that he didn’t really understand in those days but which, he felt even then, bore within its twin plosives a hint of criticism. Nowadays ‘dapper’ is out of date, but may be usefully replaced by ‘smooth’. Geoffrey is smooth. His white hair is of the evenness of freshly fallen snow on a rooftop, the moustache a narrow cornice of snow on the façade. He is wearing beautifully creased white slacks and a crocodile-leather belt. His shoes gleam. His dark blue shirt looks as though it must be silk. Only his skin is flawed, with patches of pale pigmentation on cheeks and forehead and on the hand that grasps a Malacca cane. But his grip when he shakes Thomas’ hand is strong. ‘It’s good to see you again, Tom. Come on in! Come on in! What a bugger I couldn’t make it to your darling mother’s funeral. But you’ll understand. You know what they say about hip replacement? Bend over with care, don’t kick the cat, and keep away from magnets.’ The voice is quite unchanged. There is exactly the same timbre, hint of cockney, hint of laughter that Thomas recalls from childhood.
They pass through a hallway into an expansive sitting room lit by wide windows. Chairs and sofas in chrome and white leather stand on the black floorboards like exhibits in a gallery. One entire wall is covered by a mural. It shows a long, trompe l’oeil balustrade on which a trompe l’oeil cat sits looking out over the swimming-pool blue of a fictive Mediterranean. Tendrils of vine and wisteria writhe around the edges of the scene. Gauze curtains fly in the false breeze. In the middle distance there is a smoking island that might be Stromboli.
‘What do you think?’ Geoffrey’s tone is part apologetic, part proud. ‘The previous owner had it done so you mustn’t blame it on me. I think he used the place to keep his several mistresses. You must have a look at the bathroom.’
Thomas follows him down a short corridor to a marble bathroom with a view over the Bay of Naples. A purple Vesuvius smoulders in the haemorrhage from a bloody sunset. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s amazing.’
‘Just what I thought when I first saw it, my dear. Amazing. Camp meets kitsch. I couldn’t possibly have had it painted over. Gordon thinks that all English houses are like this, so I took him round the Pavilion just to show him that they can be a lot worse.’
Who, Thomas wonders, is Gordon?
They return to the sitting room. ‘What’ll you have? Is it too early for gin? Of course not. Your mother always drank gin and it, didn’t she? Medicinal, she used to say. I tried to educate her towards pink gin, but it was always gin and it for her. You’ll stay to lunch, won’t you? I’ve sent Gordon out to do his magic round the delis, with strict instructions to bring back things Greek. How about that? Taramasalata and hummus and other outlandish things. Once upon a time the Brits had never heard of them. Nowadays it’s hard to find anything else.’
Thomas takes his gin and circles the room cautiously, trying contexts and settings,
endeavouring to work things out, spot clues, sense hints: a Persian carpet here, a Rennie Mackintosh chair there, a bookshelf with an eclectic collection that includes Aphrodite Died Here and Fortune’s Hostage, both slim volumes by Geoffrey Crozier. He is surprised to discover, on one shelf, a silver-framed photograph of a nude woman. It shows her from the waist up, strongly lit, her head turned profile and tilted down as though she is looking at something on the floor. There is a sculptural beauty to the photograph, the curves and convexities of a piece by Barbara Hepworth or Henry Moore. One of the woman’s breasts is in dark silhouette; the other, a perfect teardrop, is bisected by shadow. Its nipple is a wrinkled nub, the only surface in the whole photograph that is not satin-smooth.
‘That’s Guppy,’ Geoffrey says. ‘Was Guppy. My wife. Taken in 1947 by Bill Brandt.’
‘Bill Brandt? Really?’
‘Do you know him?’
‘Of course I know him.’
‘More than your mother did. I used to have a censored version around the house in Cyprus. It wasn’t the kind of picture you could show off in its entirety, not in those days, not in polite society anyway.’
Guppy. The nickname seemed absurd, slightly derisory. Thomas has always imagined someone lardy and lumpen, and now he is presented with this – a sculptural beauty photographed by one of the masters of the twentieth century. ‘She was very beautiful’ is all he can manage as a comment.
Geoffrey laughs. ‘Weren’t we all, once? Your mother was beautiful, and now she’s dead. You were a beautiful little boy, and now look at you. And as for me—’