by Simon Mawer
‘I didn’t,’ she repeated. ‘I promise.’
‘Come on, lad,’ said the officer. He had a serious expression on his face, as though a solecism had just been committed and he was really rather shocked. ‘Just take it easy. There’s no point in messing about with guns. Someone could get hurt.’
Faintly, as you might sense someone fall asleep, she felt Nicos relax his grip.
‘Put the gun down, son.’
‘Don’t hurt him,’ she said. ‘Please don’t hurt him.’
‘Of course we won’t hurt him.’
Still she didn’t move. His arm had gone from across her front but she stayed pressed against him. ‘I love him,’ she said softly, as though love might be a mitigation.
‘I’m sure you do, ma’am. We all do. A jolly good chap. Now just come over here and we’ll all be happy.’
She turned and looked up at Nicos. There was bewilderment in his eyes, and fear, and loathing. The gun was there in his right hand, no longer against her head but close to her cheek. She could smell the oil and the scent of its metal, like the smell of blood. ‘Put the gun down, Nicos. Please.’
‘Don’t drop the fucking thing,’ one of the soldiers cried. ‘The fucker might go off.’
‘Just put it down, lad,’ the policeman said. ‘Just put it down on the floor.’
Slowly, watching the soldiers, Nicos crouched down and laid the weapon on the tiles.
‘There’s a good chap,’ the policeman said. He held his hand out towards Dee. His eyes were blue, the lashes so pale as to be almost invisible. He smiled at her, as though to assure her of the wonderful things he had to offer – a return to normality, to family and friends, to Edward and Tom and Paula, to hearth and home. ‘Now come over to me, love. Just come slowly towards me. You’ll be quite all right, won’t she, Nick? She’ll be quite all right.’
She looked round and raised her hand to touch Nicos’ cheek, as though to assure herself of its reality. It was difficult to read his face, the tightness of the muscles, the rapid shallow breathing, the pupils dilated as they had been when they made love. Perhaps touching him would give some clue. Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, scraped against the roughness of his beard, touched his lips which were soft and fragile, almost feminine. She wanted to kneel down before him. It seemed absurd. She wanted to kneel down before him and feel his hand on her head in some kind of benediction. ‘You must believe me,’ she said quietly. ‘I never knew they were coming.’
‘Come on, love,’ the policeman repeated.
She moved minutely away, smiling up at Nicos. Then she turned and walked towards the door.
As soon as she reached him the police officer grabbed her and flung her out of the room. Outside on the landing there were other hands to take hold of her, other voices, other accents. Behind her was a sound, difficult to interpret, a rush of noise, a scuffle and a cry. There was a shout, Nicos’ voice crying something. And then the shouting died. ‘It’s OK!’ a voice called. ‘It’s OK. All under control.’
She tried to turn back but hands held her and a couple of soldiers grabbed her and hurried her down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairwell were two Turkish policemen. Outside there was staring white sunlight and faces peering through windows and doorways. Suddenly she was shaking. Her legs almost gave way beneath her but there were always hands to bear her up, soldiers all around her. She saw that the street had been cordoned off and there were civilians crowded at one end. Barricades were being pulled into place. Policemen, dark-skinned Turks with heavy moustaches, were standing beside their vehicles and there was an army lorry as well, and an army blood wagon. That’s what they’d been expecting. Blood. They’d been expecting everything.
Geoffrey stepped forward from among a group of policemen. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Do you need a doctor or shall we go? I’ve got my car here. I don’t really think we can talk on the pavement.’
He put a hand on her arm but she shook him off. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
He smiled reproachfully and stood aside for her to go out first. His car was parked against the kerb a few yards down, the Volkswagen that she knew so well. He handed her into the back, then went round to the other side and climbed in beside her.
‘I don’t want to talk, Geoffrey.’
‘Don’t be silly. Cigarette?’
‘Please.’ He fiddled with his lighter and there was the spurt of flame. She drew smoke into her lungs and stared away, out of the window. Some civilians had come out of a nearby block of flats to watch the drama, fat women in slack cotton dresses, men in white shirts and grey trousers, the uniform. There were children. A couple of boys began to shout something. ‘Enosi,’ they shouted ‘Enosi! ’ Dee craned round to see but there were too many people in the way – policemen, a few civilians. And then they brought out Nicos. They’d handcuffed and hooded him, but it was obvious who it was. Pushing and shoving, they led him towards the police van. She watched as they opened the rear door and lifted him in like baggage. Two policemen followed, and then the doors slammed shut. There were two little windows high up in the doors, with wire grilles. ‘You’re a bastard, Geoffrey, do you know that?’
‘It goes with the job, Dee.’
‘What’ll happen to him?’
There was a silence. He smoked, watching her. ‘Depends what charges they bring. And that depends in part on you …’
The engine of the police van roared. There was a clash of gears. She drew on her cigarette and tapped the ash into the ashtray, and looked at Geoffrey. She attempted a smile. It felt like someone trying a difficult manoeuvre that they haven’t quite perfected, a cartwheel or a handstand or something. But she pulled it off. A smile. ‘I have nothing to say to you, Geoffrey. Nothing at all.’
Seventeen
Nothing has changed. The furniture is still in place, the pictures and the clutter of possessions that she accumulated over the years. Yet everything has changed: every object, every surface, every plane and every vertical. All has lost its gloss of recent handling and acquired instead a micron depth of dust, a grey bloom that might have been the brushwork of time itself, blurring memory and recall. This place is not the past, is certainly not the future. It is some kind of limbo, occupied by grey shades: Persephone’s kingdom.
Thomas closes the door behind him, picks up mail from the doormat – circulars, bills, letters from the bank and the solicitor – and takes it through into the kitchen. Sitting at the table he tears open envelopes and glances over the motley contents. One of them is a handwritten letter of condolence – ‘We were abroad and we’ve only just heard …’ – another comes from some charity, suggesting that the loss of a loved one is the perfect moment to consider making a donation. There are, it makes clear, tax advantages to be had. Then there is a new bank statement, sent despite the fact that the account has been frozen, and a letter from the building society explaining how much money can be made available prior to a grant of probate, and one from the solicitor dithering over some technicality: ‘There appears to be a slight problem with one of your mother’s bank accounts. I think we would be best advised to meet personally in order to clarify this issue.’
Searching in the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink he finds old copies of The Times neatly folded like laundry, and a packet, half opened and half used, of firelighters. It isn’t a cold day – an ordinary day of intermittent cloud and sunshine, the rain, when it comes, a fine drizzle, the sun, when it shines, something pale and glistening like a reflection – but still he takes these things through into the sitting room and prepares a fire in the grate: the firelighter, loosely bunched pages of the newspaper, a small pyramid of kindling wood from the basket that is still there beside the fireplace, some pieces of coal laid carefully on the timber construction. He waits for the wood to take, then puts the guard in place and goes quietly upstairs to his mother’s bedroom.
There is the painted wardrobe, the photograph of his father, the watercol
our of Hope village, all the mementoes, the possessions, the things that are all that remain. There is also that dress, hanging in the wardrobe. He takes it out and carefully lays it, empty, a mere skin, on the bed. His mind plays over the memory of Kale standing there in the centre of the room, incongruous in the fashion of the nineteen-fifties, posing with a clumsy grace and twirling round so that the skirt flared out; then sitting suddenly on the bed for him to remove her shoes. And lying back as he lifted the skirt. Her expression of puzzlement. ‘What are you up to, Thomas?’ The rough scribble of her hair, the closed mouth, the subtle shades of cream and ivory, and then the deep pink, like the throat of an exotic flower. Her smell and taste.
He picks up the phone and dials her number. A woman’s voice answers.
‘Is that Mrs Macintosh?’
‘Who’s this?’ The tone is guarded, as though he might do violence to her down the telephone line.
‘It’s Thomas again. Thomas Denham. You remember? I rang before.’
‘Oh. Yeah, that history teacher.’
‘Something like that. Is Kale there?’
There’s a pause, as though for thought. ‘Hang on and I’ll get her.’
He waits. There are sounds off, like talking overheard from the next room, and then the noise of the receiver being picked up and Kale’s voice loud in his ear: ‘Yeah?’
‘It’s Tom.’
‘Where are you?’
‘At the house. I’ve got someone coming round to take stuff away. Look, I was wondering if you were still coming. You were meant to ring to confirm.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘You’re always busy. How’s Emma?’
‘She’s great.’ The word lacks the last consonant. ‘Grey,’ she seemed to say.
‘So you’re coming?’
She hesitates. ‘I dunno. Emms has still got a bit of a cold—’
‘You just said she was great.’
‘Well, she’s all right. You know what I mean.’
‘The sea air will be good for her. Better than Coldharbour Lane air, that’s for sure. She’ll love the boats and the seagulls, and the river. You’ll enjoy it, both of you.’
‘It’s just—’
What is it just?
‘I don’t know what the point is.’
‘The point is to enjoy yourselves, the two of you. Nothing more. No pressure, no relatives. I told you, just the three of us.’
‘I s’pose.’
What the hell does that mean? There’s a silence. He hates talking on the phone, hates the single dimension of it, the conversations without depth or colour. Like reading a play without seeing the performance. ‘You do what you think best,’ he says, dangerously.
‘OK, I’ll do what I think best.’
‘There’s a train at five to one. I’ll be at the station to meet it.’
‘Right.’
He wants to say other things. He wants to say that she means everything to him, that he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, that he loves her; but he dare not say any of them. ‘See you’ is all he manages, before he cuts the line and turns back to the wardrobe. Methodically he gets the other clothes out – the dresses, the skirts, the slacks – and lays them on the bed, neatly in rows, like laying out so many corpses. Then he begins to empty her drawers – underwear, sweaters, blouses, the whole mass of garments tossed on to the bed along with the other things, and then everything stuffed into black plastic bin bags. Like evidence being taken away from the scene of a crime, evidence of a life being consigned to the limbo of forgetting. He humps the bags downstairs to the hallway. There is a dozen of them by the end.
He glances at his watch. In his imagination Kale and Emma take the Underground away from the land of concrete and graffiti and waste. He pictures the train rattling in its tube deep beneath the river, with Kale clutching her daughter’s hand and staring at the black window, while strap-hanging men jolt speculatively against her. He imagines the pair of them standing on the escalator as it slides them up from the depths at Liverpool Street, Persephone and her daughter returning to the upper world from Hades.
In the sitting room the fire has taken, the coals cracking in the heat and glowing a dull red. A faint, luminous flame hovers over them. There are other things to do. He goes up to the study and with care he assembles the evidence: the letter from Geoffrey, the envelope of Oddments with its burden of ship’s menu and its few typewritten sheets, the newspaper cutting, the two poems, the circumstantial photograph. Nick.
He carries his little bundle down to the sitting room, moves the fireguard aside, then crouches down and feeds the pieces of paper, one by one, into the flames. Each sheet curls and wrinkles and browns before flaring into brief and intense life. The black skeletons float in the hot air for a moment, as fragile as memories, before shattering against the firebricks. He watches the small holocausts of incident and memory, until finally only the photograph remains. This is made of sterner stuff than the rest and it takes longer to burn. It curls, the emulsion cracking and charring, the two figures staring out at him like bodies in a cremation while the circle of black constricts around them. Then the flames billow, consuming everything.
If there is no evidence, there is no history.
The doorbell rings. It’s the man from Oxfam, complete with the white van that he has borrowed, so he says, from a mate. Together they hump the bags into the back, and Thomas hands over a tenner for his trouble. He stands and watches as the van draws away before turning back to the house.
The place seems different now. Void, empty of something fundamental. He goes through into the kitchen to get something together for lunch. Will Kale come? He hopes, imagines, doesn’t dare to doubt that she is even now standing beneath the departures board at Liverpool Street Station, looking up at the letters and numbers flickering over, the dominoes falling; with Emma beside her, clinging to her hand.
He’s about to start eating when the doorbell interrupts him again, but this time when he opens it he discovers Janet Burford on the doorstep. She stands there blinking, her feet planted wide as though she’s on a deck and not going to be put off by any rocking of the boat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I saw you clearing things out earlier and I thought I’d drop in.’ She looks over his shoulder. ‘Are you alone? Do you think I could have a word?’
‘I was just starting lunch. I’ve got to meet someone at the station.’ Is Kale even now sitting in the train with Emma beside her, the pair of them watching the dull Essex flats pass by the window?
‘Just a sec. Please.’
‘Can’t we make it some other time?’
‘I’d rather not.’ There’s a blunt stubbornness about her presence, as though she has made up her mind about this and is determined not to be put off. Reluctantly Thomas steps aside to let her pass. He follows her into the sitting room and watches as she looks round as though to see what’s missing. Then her eyes light on the only tangible thing that Kale and he share, the piece of pottery that she gave them, that sits now, like a gynaecological specimen, on a shelf beside the fireplace. She picks it up and runs her hands over it fondly, as she did with the piece of Meissen that stood there before.
‘You and Kale. Are you still together?’
‘She’s meant to be coming this afternoon. With her daughter.’
Her eyelids flicker. ‘How nice. I’d love to see her again. She’s such a lovely young woman. Strong, isn’t she? Lots of guts. And I’d love to meet her little girl. Maybe you can come round. Would you like to? This evening if you want.’
He shrugs. ‘Look—’
‘I love children. But somehow I didn’t dare have them when I was married. I thought I might destroy them if I did.’
‘Why are you so special? Every parent risks that.’
‘Because I almost destroyed myself?’ The upward lilt, as though she isn’t quite sure about the destruction and wants reassurance on the point. ‘And now I’m too old even if I wanted them. So w
hose responsibility was that? Mine, I suppose. I don’t know. Who’s responsible for someone being what they are? That’s what I mean about being a parent. And I was adopted, so there were other factors, weren’t there? But you can’t blame my adoptive parents. They tried their best …’ Her voice trails away. She seems close to tears.
‘Look, can I get you something – a cup of tea or coffee perhaps? And then I’m afraid I must ask—’
‘No, it’s all right. I’m fine, really, Tom, I’m fine. I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’
Tom? He’s not Tom. He’s never been Tom, not since leaving school. He’s always been Thomas. Tom only to his mother, and now Kale sometimes. But not this woman, who is looking at him now with something approaching fear, as though the distress she has shown is his fault. What was it Kale said about her? She’s damaged.
‘Then perhaps—’
‘Have you heard of a man called Charteris?’ she asks. The question has nothing to do with what she has been saying – it’s a symptom of the erratic way her mind works, like that bloody blinking. ‘Charteris,’ she insists. ‘Didn’t Dee ever mention him?’
‘Look, I’ve really got things to do …’ He moves as though to show her the door.
‘Tom Charteris?’
Thomas stops. ‘Yes, she did. He was an old boyfriend of hers, back home in Sheffield. Killed in the war.’ A pause. ‘But I never knew his name was Tom.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know. You see, Tom Charteris was my father.’
And Thomas can see. Suddenly, fleetingly, he can see the resemblance. It’s like a familiar face recognized in a blurred photograph – something about the cast of her eyes and the set of her cheek and jaw. He sits down heavily in the other armchair, the one that was his mother’s. He’s no longer inclined to try and stop her. In fact he’s bound to hear her through to the end: it’s his duty, more or less. ‘Go on.’
She opens her hands. They have been clenched tight and now that she relaxes them there are the marks of her nails in the palms, and the scar tissue on her wrists that Kale noticed. ‘Where do I start? With me as a little girl, wondering about them? You do, of course, once you’ve been told the truth.’ Her face works in that convulsive manner, as though the machinery beneath the skin, the delicate articulation of nerve and muscle and tendon, has broken. ‘As a child I used to lie in bed and imagine them coming to rescue me. How was I to know that he was dead? Of course I wasn’t. But my mother was still alive, and she never came looking either. Never at all. Well, she wouldn’t have, would she? She’d barely even seen me. I was hardly even a memory.’