I make this rule. I have to read a page of book between each time I look out of the window. And after four more pages, there he is.
And she is. Don’t see her at first, it’s just him hunched over, the street light flickering leafy shadows on his on his grey hair and his humpy shoulders. And then I realise they’re specially humpy because he’s hugging someone and of course it’s the au pair. They’re partly hidden by a branch of the tree, but I can see enough. I drop the curtain, lie down on my bed with Animal Farm and wait, feeling all kind of sick and squirmy.
And soon, in he comes with his face all pink and strangely open like he’s dropped an E or something. He takes off his glasses and looks at me with a naked dazzle in his eyes.
‘You OK?’ he says.
I nod.
‘Have a good evening?’
‘OK,’ I say.
‘Pizza nice?’
‘Not particularly.’
He clears his throat. ‘Er, I’m considering staying here for another day,’ he says. ‘No need to go haring off to Bucharest, is there? Bucharest will wait.’
‘Why?’ I say.
‘Unfinished business.’
I refrain from comment.
‘Would you mind?’
I look at his face. I want to say no, but how can I? ‘It’ll cost you,’ I say.
The smile he gives me is like no smile I’ve ever seen before. It’s so hot and pure it almost burns and I have to look away.
Mats
The path is steep, winding between trees. Mats is out of breath from trying to keep up. This could be a forest in Norway, or Scotland for that matter, a fringe of birch and rowan leading to stately areas of beech and the shadows between creaking pines. Tom and Marta have stopped to examine a great craggy toadstool allowing Mats to catch up. Tom pokes the fungus with his stick. ‘Poisonous?’ he asks, with relish.
‘No, it is delicious, but this one is too old. See.’ She takes Tom’s stick and chops the flesh, to show that it is full of little squirming grubs.
‘Shitting hell!’ Tom jumps back.
Smiling, Marta shakes her head at Mats.
‘Have you seen many bears?’ Tom asks her.
‘Not lately.’ She pulls a face. ‘You’re more likely to see them at the rubbish tip than anywhere else.’
Regardless, Tom leaps on ahead, wielding a stick.
Marta grins over her shoulder at Mats as she follows. It’s lovely the way her face lightens when she smiles like that. Back in Edinburgh he hardly remembers her smiling at all.
Tomorrow they leave for Bucharest, this is the deal with Tom: one extra day for an iPhone. He drives a hard bargain. Only one more day with Marta and later, she says, she must work. She was reluctant to come to the forest with them, suggesting other outings: a hunting lodge from communist times, where they hoarded their precious artworks and wines; a monastery, a castle. But Tom, London boy, had insisted on the real wild forest, on a bear hunt.
‘I loved coming here when I was small.’ Marta turns to Mats, rather sadly maybe. ‘Tata used to bring us for a picnic in August every year, to pick mushrooms. Mama dried them to last the winter.’
Knuckles of root lift the path, make a gnarled stairway; he watches Marta’s small sure feet, feels gross in comparison, plodding, out of breath. Last night he didn’t get the chance to say what he’s come to say, but today he will speak. It may be the only chance. He fixes his eyes on her slim back in its white T-shirt and dark jeans, the tumble of her hair, admires the way she walks, feet lifting neatly, surely.
He will tell her what he did to Mr Chapman. He must. That name in his mind causes a sensation like a fist thrusting upwards between his ribs, winding him, squashing his heart. An organ has grown there made of darkness, made of guilt, made of the thing never spoken, hardly admitted even to himself and if he doesn’t speak this secret, he fears that it will kill him. It makes no sense to say it to anyone else. It wouldn’t work to say it to anyone else.
‘Hey,’ shouts Tom, ‘check it out!’
Marta follows his voice and Mats lumbers after her into a clearing in the wood, and in the clearing is a pool, almost circular, scattered with leaves, reflecting treetops and a vivid blue and white sky. White and yellow flowers, butterflies – blue and tawny – and a ridiculously gaudy circle of fly agarics, it’s like a setting in a Disney film.
‘Wicked,’ Tom says, smashing a perfect toadstool with his stick. ‘Loads of men were shot in this forest,’ he adds. ‘Did you know?’
Marta gives a single nod and turns her face away but not before Mats sees her expression. She moves away from Mats, trailing her fingers against the trunk of a knotty birch.
‘Any fish in there?’ Tom asks. Fly fishing was his last year’s craze. ‘Should have brought a rod.’ He peers into the water.
‘I do not like this spot,’ says Marta, darting Mats a panicked look. ‘Let’s go back now.’
‘But it’s cool!’ Tom edges round the pool, begins mucking about with sticks, trying to dam the little stream that trickles into the pool.
Marta comes to Mats; a finger brushes his sleeve. ‘Please. We must go back,’ she says. ‘I have to work.’
‘Give him five minutes.’
They stand side by side, faces reflected in the smooth green sheen of the water. Water skaters make tiny dimples on the meniscus. Behind their heads a cloud shape-shifts.
‘A dog,’ Marta says, her voice a sad scrape.
‘Sorry?’
‘The cloud, looks like dog. No it’s changed now.’
‘Into a sheep.’ Mats remembers playing cloud pictures as a child and with his own kids too. ‘A sheep with feathers.’
Abruptly he finds he can’t breathe. The opportunity is draining away. If he doesn’t tell her now, he never will. Tom clambers up a tree.
‘Careful,’ Mats calls.
In the water Marta’s face is small, his own a heavy wedge, specs glinting. Tom sits on a branch, legs swinging. The wires of his headphones snake from his hoodie down to his iPod; his legs swing in time to his music.
Between Mats and Marta the silence stretches. A leaf drops onto the water rippling their reflections. She snatches her face away. When she meets his eyes he sees that hers are huge and black. ‘This is where the men were shot, I think,’ she says. ‘See.’ She leads him to the trees, points out thick scars, black against the silver bark. Mats glances at Tom high in the tree, he’ll be thrilled to hear this.
But Marta is continuing, ‘My Tata. And boyfriend, Virgil, and others. Maybe it was here. I don’t know for sure.’
Mats looks at the ground, the lush grass where blood has maybe soaked, the knobs of fungus pushing up. Birds whistle, leaves whisper. The uneven rooty ground makes him think of bones.
‘Sorry,’ he mutters. So useless. Oh he wants to fold her in his arms. But he does not dare to even touch. Last night, when he held her, she was so stiff.
They must go. Soon it will be too late. Mats calls Tom but he doesn’t hear, waves but he doesn’t see. His eyes are closed, feet thrashing away to whatever music is pumping into his ears. Usually it would annoy Mats: listen to the birds! he’d say, but right now he’s glad.
‘I must go,’ she says.
‘One more minute?’ Mats nods at the boy.
Marta sniffs and nods, hugs her arms around herself.
A couple of small brown birds, some kind of finch, flit down, peck at the ground; butterflies are like flying petals. The stiller you are, the more you see; a metal dragonfly flashes turquoise, flies buzz, wiry and sinuous. The fist is pushing up, squashing his heart, his lungs, till he really thinks he might collapse. Is he having a heart attack? He props himself against a tree, takes a deep breath.
‘I want to tell you something. I need you to know,’ he says in a rush. ‘No one else knows.’
Her eyes widen as
she waits for him to speak.
‘Mr Chapman,’ he begins.
She flinches, steps away. ‘No.’
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Please.’
She turns her back on him but she can still hear.
‘I killed him.’ The three words come out just like that after all this time. Three bits of something breaking off. Her back stiffens but she is motionless, listening.
‘I went that day to look for you. He was there in the Club, in the basement. And I saw down there . . . I saw a body.’ Heart thudding now, hard and loud, as if it will bound right up his throat. Forcing it down, he says, ‘I thought it was you.’
She turns, face parchment yellow, such deeply scored furrows on her forehead she has become almost ugly.
‘So I killed him. I punched him and he fell backwards. He fell into the basement. I shut the trapdoor and left.’
The words are a jerky string and the whole world dangles from it, the whole world depends on what she says and what she does now. Or else it does not matter. At least he’s said it. Legs weak, he leans back against the tree, a finger of sweat tracing down his temple. How can his heart withstand this?
She whispers something he doesn’t catch.
‘What?’
A fly scribbles between them.
‘I thought it was you,’ he says.
Tears well up in her eyes and roll over but she steps back when he reaches out. Tom is singing something along with his music. From high above a grinding sound – a plane. He glances up at the straight white vapour trail. Gasps in a breath.
‘You murdered Ratman?’ Her lashes are spiked, there’s a thread of grey in her hair he notices and his poor heart stutters, blooms.
‘I thought he’d killed you.’
She puts her hands in front of her face, looks at him, huge eyed over her finger tips.
‘Maybe you saw Alis.’ She swallows, scrubs her wet cheek with her fists. ‘My friend.’
A branch cracks, startling making them both, and Tom jumps down. ‘I’m starving,’ he seems to yell. ‘Can we get a burger?’
Mats looks down at Marta, arms hugged tight around herself. If only he could take his thumb and smooth out the lines on her brow. He aches for contact with her; it seems necessary to help him breathe.
‘OK,’ he says to his son.
‘Cool!’ Tom grabs his stick. Gives Marta an odd, almost mocking look, extends it to Mats, shrugs and jaunts off, shouting over his shoulder, ‘Watch out for bears.’
Marta has remained motionless, hunched, staring at the ground.
‘Hey, we’d better go,’ Mats says unwillingly as the sounds of his son recede. Somewhere deep down fear stirs. What if there are bears?
‘You murdered Ratman,’ Marta says, looking straight into his face, and giving – no it can’t be, but it is – a choke of laughter. ‘You,’ she emphasises the word in a way he doesn’t quite like. ‘You crazy Norwegian, you murdered Ratman?’
She stares up at him, her face a struggle of shock and amusement, shaking her head, tears brightening her eyes. ‘And you got away with it.’ She gives a whimpering, almost exalted moan, opens her mouth as if to say more, does not, turns her back on him to thread away between the trees.
‘But wait . . .’ Mats follows, heavy, tripping, clumsy, soon out of breath. His poor heart trudges laboriously. But at least it is still beating. He catches up with her.
‘I didn’t get away with it,’ he says. ‘Not here.’ He screws his knuckles against his chest.
‘Let it go,’ she says, and turns away.
‘What?’
‘Let it go.’
He’s halted in his tracks. She leaves the words behind between the leaves. Let it go. He carries on, following her, trying to breathe. He can’t catch up. Maybe there is more room in his chest now that he has spoken? Let it go. These are simple words, beautiful words. Up ahead Tom is whooping about something; a bird sings, just like a blackbird at home. Mats stops and gazes up between the treetops to see the contrail dissolving into the blue.
‘Let it go?’ he says to the sky. ‘Let it go?’
Not until they’re at the forest fringes does he manage to catch Marta up again. She’s leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette. When she holds the packet out to him, he shakes his head. Across a field he can see the hire car parked glinting blue in the sun. Tom is already there, a tiny figure, leaning against the bonnet. Quite safe; no bears.
She tilts her head back and breathes out smoke. On her cheeks are the smudges of dried tears. Her hair is stirring in the breeze, deep brown-black with those darling premature threads of grey.
‘Let it go?’ he says to her.
A warm bee blunders through the air between them and there is something honeyed in the sensation between his ribs, a sweet softening when she says, ‘Yes. It is over. Let it go.’ She throws down her cigarette and walks off. He puts it out with his sole; they don’t want to start a forest fire.
They begin to walk, quite slowly, across a rutted weedy field strewn with flints and bits of broken pot. He feels the beginnings of a lightness; as if he might have left something behind in the forest, between the trees.
‘About our conversation,’ he dares. ‘Last night.’
‘Mmm?’
‘You said you wanted to go to university.’
She shakes her head impatiently.
‘You did.’
‘Maybe once.’
He stumbles and rights himself. The sun is hot out here, he can feel a sting on his neck.
‘You still could,’ he says.
She snorts.
‘Why not?’
‘Is too late for me.’ She bends to pick up a small mottled feather, smooths the filaments between her fingers.
‘Rubbish,’ Mats says.
She has turned towards him and the look on her face is almost startled.
‘You could go to night school.’ This plan began hatching in the long wakeful hours of night. A plan to do a good thing to try to make up for the bad.
‘I work evenings,’ she says. ‘And I must earn money for my family.’
‘Come to London,’ Mats says tentatively, half expecting her to turn and walk away, or tell him to fuck off. ‘Nothing like that,’ he says hastily, ‘just listen.’
She shrugs as if she doesn’t care what he says, but he detects a sharpening of her attention.
‘If you came to London, I could help you,’ he says. ‘You could earn more there. You could study.’
‘How?’
‘You could stay with me, or if you prefer, I could find you somewhere else, lend you money, you could sign on for evening classes, qualify for university in a couple of years. Plenty of mature students do that.’
‘Mature students,’ she repeats. Clearly, she likes the phrase. She throws the feather up and watches it twizzle down.
‘Yes, you could be a mature student, part-time maybe so you could work too, send money home. I’d help you get set up.’
‘What about a visa?’
‘I’d help with that. Looks as if you’ll be in the EU before too long, then you can come and go as you like.’
She bites her thumb staring at him.
‘I can’t,’ she says, ‘it’s too much, how can I?’
They’ve reached the edge of the field.
‘Hurry up!’ calls Tom. ‘I’m starving to death here.’
‘What do you say?’
She stands for a moment, clenching and unclenching her fists, then, ‘I’m hungry too,’ she says, looking up at him. ‘So much I could eat a horse!’
She looks so proud of the English idiom it makes him smile. He takes a breath, deeper than any he has managed for a long time. ‘So?’ he says.
She reaches out to take his hand. Her fingers are small but strong, cooler than his own.
She doesn’t answer, but squeezes tightly before she lets go. And as she turns away to cross the road he sees that her eyes are brimming, not with tears, but with light.
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Bill Hamilton, Jen Hamilton-Emery, Andrew Greig, Jane Rogers, Tracey Emerson, Ron Butlin and Regi Claire.
The Squeeze Page 23