INCARNATION

by Daniel Easterman

Suddenly, he saw Sam’s head turn, drawn by something at the door. It was Gromit. David remembered noticing her in the living room when he’d gone in to find Nicky. The cat ran in and headed straight for Sam.

  David let out a cry and lunged for the cat, but it was too late. She jumped up at Sam, expecting him to catch her, clawing his face as her attempt failed, throwing his delicate balance off. The boy threw up his hands, and the spring thudded back, releasing the trigger and sending eight inches of steel bolt into the centre of Sam’s chest, hurling him backwards and smashing him against the bedroom wall. A smear of blood washed the wallpaper. It was an image David could never expunge from his mind: Sam’s blood, red on a poster of the Arsenal football team, his passion and his ambition.

  He did not cry out. There was no time. By the time David reached him, he was already dead.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The sun shone as brightly as a winter fire all through the day of the funeral. Trees caught the light in the furrows of their branches, and juggled it between their leaves, dappling and undappling the grass at their feet. Row upon row of white headstones lay bedazzled in the brightness, and here and there a golden name would shout aloud, or a sequence of dates, carved deep in the stone, would tug at the attention of passers-by.

  Sam’s dates, when they came to be carved, would plead for notice. Nine years, seven months, five days. Until then, a wooden cross served to mark his head. The grave was heaped with flowers, more flowers than David had ever seen in his life. He walked about among them for a while, reading cards, struggling to remember the host of names, until it was too much, and he stood to one side, fighting back the darkest tears of his life.

  Elizabeth was there, as she had every right to be. David could not have turned her away. He gave her what little comfort he could; she made herself a sort of hostess to the occasion, and said nothing to comfort or quieten him. It was not that she did not grieve, merely that she coped with her grief by turning it into something else: resentment or self-pity, and frequently anger. Every so often she would remove a little bottle from her handbag and take a not-too-surreptitious sip from its neck. He pitied her then, and might almost have loved her had she not looked at him, all love extinguished, and shaken someone else’s hand.

  She held him responsible, of course; he’d expected that. She said nothing directly, but it came out again and again in little meaningful phrases against which he could not defend himself. 'If he hadn’t been …’ ‘Surely, if there’d been the slightest risk …’ ‘Did you really have to leave him on his own … ?’ She stopped short of blaming the service, knowing that any accusation there would come too close to home.

  Anthony Farrar stayed away, knowing his presence would have caused an unwelcome stir. As David’s boss, of course, he was morally bound to be present, not least because there was every reason to believe Sam had been killed in error for the boy being kept down in the Cotswolds. David couldn’t decide whether Farrar’s absence was out of delicacy on account of his relationship with the dead child’s mother, or because he wanted to avoid drawing attention to the link between Sam’s death and his father’s occupation.

  There were others there from the China Desk and elsewhere in the service, close friends and acquaintances of David’s who’d made a point of turning up. They hadn’t all known Sam, but those who hadn’t knew of him. Privately, they’d sworn that whoever was responsible would pay a high price for the boy’s murder. They’d already stepped up surveillance of the Chinese embassy to the point where they knew if a toothpick went missing from the refectory.

  Elizabeth’s older brother, Laurence Royle, was there, of course, looking rich and healthy and completely detached. A bevy of lesser Royles had come with him, curiosity-seekers from a world that knew little of grief or any raw emotion. Laurence shook hands on all sides, picking his careful way through his fellow guests like a surgeon among prospective patients. The 1997 election had lost him his previously comfortable seat in the shires, but he had not thrown off the patronizing manner of a member of the political elite.

  David’s parents were there, still devastated by the news. His mother seemed to have shrunk, like a fruit that has dried from within, shrivelling the flesh. His father held himself stiff and still throughout the interment, gazing out over the trees into a distance whose ends were invisible to anyone but himself. Later, when they went back to the house for food, he kept to himself while David’s mother helped Elizabeth. David found him sitting on a high stool in the kitchen, an undrunk cup of tea in hand.

  ‘Why don’t we go out to the garden?’ David suggested.

  His father said nothing, but followed him out. It was a large garden, full of Canterbury bells and hollyhocks and tall trees covered in moss and thick clumps of ivy. Up above, the branches were patrolled by convoys of dipping and turning birds. The old man looked up at them for a minute or more, then turned to David.

  ‘"The oriole cries, as though it were its own tears

  Which damp even the topmost blossoms on the tree".'

  David knew the poem, a brief, four-line piece by Li Shang-Yin.

  ‘No orioles here, Father.’ He sneezed once, assailed by the garden’s thick pollens.

  The old man sighed, and they walked on. Guests watched them go, but no one intruded on their grief.

  David looked at his father, as though seeing him for the first time in years. Age had settled on him like a deposit of white ash, transforming his skin to parchment and his hair to thin strands of gossamer. His shoulders were stooped, but he refused to use a stick. Mentally, he seemed as sharp as ever.

  ‘Why isn’t Maddie here?’ he asked.

  David had expected the question, dreaded it.

  ‘She doesn’t know, Father. She isn’t well again.’

  ‘Is she in hospital?’

  ‘Yes. Dr Rose’s clinic’

  ‘I hope that bitch is paying.’

  ‘Not today, Dad, please.’

  ‘When will you tell her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Rose says it could do irreparable damage to tell her now. Her breakdown was a reaction to Elizabeth’s leaving.'

  ‘I’m sorry, David. You’ve got too much to cope with. Why don’t you close the house for a while, come and live with us? You’ll be no good here on your own.’

  ‘I’ll get by.’

  ‘You never get by. You’re not self-sufficient. Your mother spoilt you.’

  ‘Father, there’s something I need to tell you. Please don’t mention it to anyone, especially not Mother.’

  ‘I never mention anything to her. Here, let’s sit down. I’m tired, standing all day.’

  A wooden bench stood in the green shade of a tall ash tree. Two cousins hovering nearby smiled awkwardly and moved away, leaving David and his father alone. They sat down side by side, father and son, both bereft. All David could do suddenly was cry, deep, all-engulfing washes of silent tears that tore his heart. His father sat with him patiently, saying nothing, with one arm round his son’s shoulders. Above them, the birds sang and flew in and out, chirruping as though their hearts would burst.

  In the house, in the unlit upstairs bathroom, Elizabeth sat on the toilet with her head in her hands, weeping uncontrollably. She’d been to Sam’s bedroom and found the toy rabbit he’d loved so much when he was three. It had been enough to trigger this crying jag. She held it by the ears, between the fingers of her left hand, a token of her grief, and a reminder that Sam had been lost to her long before death intervened.

  Somewhere outside, she heard her name being called. In her absence, her sister Ann had started to show people round, taking friends to Sam’s room, pointing out the spot where he had died. People began leaving after that, one after the other, unable to bear the strangeness of this grief.

  The garden emptied too, for no one had the heart to stand in the sunshine watching the ghost of a little boy run and climb and shout among the shrubs and flowers. David, his tears exhausted, watched them go, half-familiar figures moving back to the hou
se. He heard his mother’s voice through an open window, sing-song, intoning an Uighur prayer, very quiet and subdued, locked more and more into the world of her youth.

  ‘Father,’ he said, ‘I have to leave London tomorrow.’

  ‘Leave?’

  ‘I’ve been ordered to Sinkiang. I’m flying to Urumchi in the morning.’

  The old man nodded. He understood too little and too much.

  ‘Will it be dangerous?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s not routine. I can’t tell you any more. I shouldn’t really be telling you this much. You must keep it to yourself. If word got out, my life would be in even greater danger.’

  ‘You have my word, you know that.’

  ‘I know.’

  A cloud passed like a sponge over the sun. David shivered. Up at the house, his mother’s voice dipped and died, and there was silence over everything.

  ‘David, before you leave, promise you’ll come to visit your mother and myself.’

  David tensed. He’d wanted to get clean away, without tears or regrets.

  ‘Dad, I’m not sure I ...’

  ‘There’s something I want to give you, David. It may be of use where you’re going.’

  ‘What is it?’

  His father gave him a cat-like look, knowing, yet expressionless.

  ‘You’ll see,’ the old man said. ‘Promise me you won’t leave without it.’

  David hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘Now, isn’t it time we went in?’

  ‘In a moment. I like sitting here. I’ve always liked this garden.’ A leaf fell into his lap, as though bringing notice of the autumn to come. ‘They were Chinese?’

  David nodded.

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘Han?’

  ‘Probably, but I can’t be sure. They were able to write characters.’

  He told his father about the girl, what they had done to her.

  ‘It’s meant to be erotic. To write on a naked woman’s body. Was she very beautiful?’

  ‘Yes. In another setting I would have found it erotic. This was ugly.’

  ‘It is such a beautiful poem. To put it to such use. He shook his head. David looked at the sky.

  ‘Wu yan du shang Shilou …’ he began.

  '"I climb West Tower alone in silence.

  While above my head the moon moves like a pickle.

  The Yutong tree is lonely,

  Bright autumn is locked in a dark courtyard.

  You can slice away the pain of separation, but it will not leave you,

  For your mind will still be in turmoil.

  Separation is nothing but melancholy.

  Parting lies in the heart like a bitter taste".'

  His voice grew still. The cloud still sat on the sun, and a dark shadow lay across the lawn. Autumn was months away, but David could feel it in his heart already, locked inside it for ever.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ he said. It’s getting cold.’

  And Elizabeth sat in her pale bathroom, that she had decorated years ago with her own hands, and felt the weeping subside, but not the pain. To live the life she lived, she had no choice but to fight down all feelings of tenderness or pity. She could not admit, even to herself, that a part of her still loved David, that little Sam had meant everything to her, and that Maddie awoke in her maternal instincts nobody would have guessed she had. And because part of her also hated David and pretended indifference to Sam, and despised Maddie for her weaknesses, she was able to bottle her other feelings inside and go on being the hard bitch she thought the world wanted her to be.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was raining heavily by the time David reached the clinic. Everything was depressingly familiar: the tree-lined avenue, the drive up to the main house, the door with its discreet plaque. He rang the bell, and listened to its notes fading on the evening air. All round him he felt the weight of understated opulence. His life with Elizabeth had never quite accustomed him to real luxury. She’d always mocked him for it, good-naturedly at first, in recent years with genuine spite.

  He’d met her shortly after finishing his degree, at a reception in the Chinese embassy. The Cultural Revolution had been officially over for a few years, but its effects still lingered, particularly within institutions like the diplomatic corps. The reception had been the first event in the embassy for years at which outsiders had been present. David’s father had been invited, one of several academics who the Chinese hoped might breathe a little life back into their universities after their long closure. He’d brought David in order to introduce him to a Uighur professor who had somehow survived the worst of the purges.

  And Elizabeth? She’d been there with the rest of her expensive clan: Laurence, her older brother, groomed to be head of the family firm; Bernard, a younger brother, recently made a director, with responsibility for foreign sales; and their mother, Cassandra, head of the firm, a monster at seventy-five, with a captivating smile and eyes that would have frozen steel.

  He ought to have taken his cue from the mother. But at twenty-two he’d found her fascinating and charming. And Elizabeth had knocked him off his feet. At twenty, she’d been beautiful, funny, and winningly sad. They didn’t make women like her where he came from; in fact, they didn’t make women like her anywhere else on earth. He spent most of that evening with her, and before they left asked her out. Now, nearly thirty years on, he could still taste the pleasure of that moment when she’d said yes.

  Soft footsteps crossed the hall, and the door swung open. A young woman in a nurse’s uniform smiled at him.

  ‘Mr Laing?’

  He nodded and stepped inside. It smelled familiar.

  Rose was waiting for him in his office on the ground floor. Everything in the room was exactly as it had been three years earlier. Row upon row of hunting prints on the back wall, a wide mahogany desk against the window, a tall blue-and-white vase in one corner that David had explained patiently was not Ming Dynasty, but Ching. Rose came forward with a smile on his slim face identical to that of the nurse.

  He was a small, dapper man with wiry white hair brushed back behind a high forehead, as if to convey strength and intelligence. David found him affable enough, and immensely skilled at his job; but he could never quite like him. The doctor held out a pale smooth hand and took David’s, as though reaching for a fragile ornament.

  ‘How’s Maddie?’

  ‘Maddie is fine. The hysteria has calmed down a great deal, and the drugs are slowly modifying her other symptoms. It won’t be fast, but we’ve started to make progress. I started her on lithium yesterday. Just 200 milligrams, but I’d like to move her up to 800 or 1,000 in the next couple of weeks.’

  ‘What about psychotherapy? If she’s stabilizing ...?’

  Rose shook his head sharply. His neatly packed little skull seemed to vibrate. A thin strand of hair fell away from the central pile.

  ‘Many of my patients see psychotherapists. I have an excellent man for hypnosis, he gets good results. But I would not recommend either approach for Maddie under any circumstances. Psychotherapists have to dismantle someone’s personality before putting it back together again. I think Maddie is too fragile for that. It might not be possible to rebuild her once she has been taken apart. Let me do what I can with the drugs. They’ll give her whatever support she needs to do what she must do.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘Of course. But not for long. Your wife was here earlier.’

  ‘Elizabeth? What the hell? You know what we did today?’

  ‘Yes. I’m very sorry. Your wife was … not well when she arrived.’

  ‘She’d been drinking?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But it wasn’t the drink. Her grief expresses itself in … unhealthy ways.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘She wasn’t alone. She had someone with her, a - well, what I would call a guru. Perhaps I’m not being accurate. Perhaps he’s a shaman, or a channeller, or whatever.
You know what I mean. Long robes. A peculiar hat.’

  ‘Oh, Lord. I think I’ve heard about this man. He does the rounds. Elderly widows, young girls. Tell me you didn’t let her take him up to Maddie.’

  'That’s what she wanted. She claimed he could “set her chakras” right. I told her, he was free to do what he liked, but he wasn’t going within fifty yards of your daughter.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she was any too keen on that.’

  ‘There was a little confrontation, yes. But she saw sense in the end.’

  ‘And did she see Maddie?’

  ‘Yes, for a few minutes. I left the guru with Tim Bowles, my assistant, and went upstairs with her.’

  ‘Did she say anything ...? I mean, did she mention Sam or the funeral?’

  ‘No. Absolutely nothing. I was there the whole time. I thought it best. Mrs Laing seemed … not quite in control.’

  ‘What about Maddie? How did she handle it?’

  ‘Very well, considering. Look, why don’t we pay her a visit? She often talks of you. I told her you were coming today.’

  More than anything, David disliked the clinic for its suffocating silences. Everything seemed shut in behind walls and doors and drugs. All the cries of grief and howls of pain, all the tears and sobs of pure misery were blocked up, shut down, concealed. There were no rattling trolleys, no slamming doors, no whistling orderlies, no televisions blaring: just white-clothed nurses moving in rubber shoes across thick carpet, doors that opened with a soft hiss at the press of a button, and every so often the quiet passage of a doctor in a dark suit and pastel tie, come to minister in silence to the manic and deranged.

  As he paused to open the door of Maddie’s room, Dr Rose turned to David.

  ‘Forgive me, but I need to know. When I spoke to her yesterday, Maddie said you … I don’t know how to put this. She suggested you had killed people. That this was in some way connected to your work. I told her you were a civil servant, that it was highly unlikely you would go round killing people. But it seems to distress her, and I need to get at the root of it. Is there any connection? Perhaps you work for the Ministry of Defence?’