The Deadly Space Between

by Patricia Duncker

  She never looked into the stack of free daily papers which accumulated in a pile of woolly dust behind the door. But she wouldn’t throw them out and she wouldn’t let me do so. She hardly ever hoovered and whenever I did the housework she told me I was wonderful: that I was a thoughtful man, a man who noticed dirt, scoured worktops, plumped up cushions. But I could feel her smirking, sensed her smothered laughter when she said those things. Somewhere, in some other place, there was another kind of man. One I wasn’t like. One she liked better.

  When I was very young I suffered from appalling, violent jealousies and made scenes. I hated it when she settled down with the phone, sinking into the big smelly sofa, pulling the rugs round her legs, shutting herself off from me to listen, to talk. She gossiped about people I didn’t know, had never seen. Her voice rose and echoed. She laughed; there was a gurgle humming in her throat. I loitered in the kitchen with the door ajar, an inefficient spy, hearing every third or fourth word, bitter and angry. She had a secret life that was not mine, about which I knew nothing.

  Yet she was always aware of me. She read my face like a landscape. I saw my shadowed surfaces and animated planes reflected in her own. You should get out on your bike more often, go to the club at the pool, make more friends. You can bring them home if you like. Why don’t you bring them home? I survived at school by resisting the pack, never answering in class, getting the top marks silently, secretly. They only picked on me once. A group of them, in the lavatory. I knew who the ringleader was. I never answered their taunts. I just waited, waited for him to make his move. Then I stabbed his hand with a compass. After that they called me Sparafucile, after the assassin in the comic. But they left me alone.

  What filled my life was books, books, books. I read my way across great plains of irrelevant trivia, occasionally striking gold. I preferred fantastic Empire Stories to Tolkien or Star Wars. I wanted to read about the adventures of brave English heroes, in khaki shorts, pushing through undergrowth filled with snakes, followed by lines of native bearers, uncovering secret caves with gleaming, precious seams of stone. I liked suspense. I also liked the big-breasted black women, who had magic knowledge and unbounded power at their fingertips, but who were always left regretfully in Africa to inherit their father’s kingdoms. The English heroes of Empire returned to the quiet, damp lawns, pale sunshine, croquet and daisies, to houses smelling of roses and lavender, to quiet women in white dresses and the discreet clink of crockery in the distance. The huge black breasts of the lost African queens were an initiation ritual, a ravine traversed in the mind and only dimly remembered in all their uneventful lives to come.

  * * *

  It was October. My bedroom was at the top of the house, tucked into the peeling white gable. I hung damp towels on the radiator under the window and looked out down the street. Our front garden was overgrown with browning dying buddleia, a dwarf conifer which, unbidden, had magnified itself to giant size, a camellia sheltered in the lee of the porch, a hedge of eleagnus which had never flourished and remained in a stunted condition of disappointment. The banks of evergreen darkened the bay window of the sitting room. The only point from which the entire, quiet, suburban street was visible was my bedroom window. There was never anything to see. I could always hear the distant ebb and flow of shrieking children. I never saw them. The husbands came home every weekday after dark, washed their cars on fine Sundays, even in the winter if there was no frost. The neighbours marched their dogs forth to the commons. A flicker of gorse marked the end of cultivated domesticity over a hundred yards away. The view never, never changed.

  It began in October. I was perched in my bedroom translating French for my S-level exams. I was the only candidate. One of the passages was very mysterious.

  J’appelle Triangle arithmétique, une figure dont la construction est telle. Je mène d’un point quelconque, G, deux lignes perpendiculaires l’une à l’autre, GV, GL, dans chacune desquelles je prends tant que je veux de parties égales et continue, à commencer par G que je nomme 1, 2, 3, etc; et ces nombres sont les exposants des divisions des lignes.

  I have named the following construction the Arithmetical Triangle. From a random point, G, let there be two perpendicular lines, GV, GL, from each of which I take equal sections and continue, beginning with G, which I call 1, 2, 3, etc; and these numbers are the ‘exposants’ of the divisions of the lines.

  I ceased to translate. Idly, I began to draw the mathematical figure described in the text. Then I heard her voice, calling, calling from the bottom of the stairs. I did not move. She was going out. I shouted back, a noncommittal assent. I heard the door clamp shut behind her. Then, automatically, I rose and stood at the window looking down the street. She appeared in the fading grey light beyond the shadows of the evergreens. The orange lamps were already shimmering in the dimness. Her boots rapped the concrete. She never carried a handbag. I saw her hair, bobbed short like a 1920s good-time girl, swinging gently in the orange glare. I raised my hand to my own head. I imagined her hair in my hands. She walked past her own car, peering briefly into the back seat. Then she looked up and quickened her stride. I followed the line of her gaze. From the angle of the window I was secure at the apex of the triangle, watching her flicker across the void, converging on the obscure point, fixed, unseen. There was a slight movement, a hand descending. And my gaze came to rest on the figure in the coming dark.

  I saw the other man for the first time. He leaned against a heavy black car, a panzer with giant rutted wheels, bull bars and special plates. At first I could make no sense at all of the male shape, and understood only details, a loose black suit, very short grey hair, it shone slightly, a man like any other man, larger perhaps, no, much larger, I can see that now as he moves, a barrel chest, a heavy step as he turns to gaze at the woman coming. Then he looks up. He is clean-shaven, fifty years old, maybe more. His face is heavy, white, as if he is wearing an actor’s mask. I am too far away to see his eyes. Then he raises his hand to his lips. He is smoking. So this is the man whose smell engulfs her body. This is the man, whose hands, reeking of nicotine, enclose hers. This is the man whose voice displaces hers, drowns her out. This is the man whose outline bulks in the doorway. This is the man whose weight crushes her ribs. This is the man who opens her secrets. This is the man she loves.

  Ensuite je joins les points de la première division qui sont dans chacune des deux lignes par une autre ligne qui forme un triangle dont elle est la base.

  Then I join the points of the first division which are in each of the two lines by another line which forms the base of the triangle.

  I crumbled over the French translation. I knew I was going to be sick, a hot wave of acid rose up from my stomach. But when I reached the lavatory nothing came, just raw waves of wretchedness. I sat there gripping the bowl that I had carefully cleaned earlier in the day, feeling lonely and cold.

  She came home late that night, smelling of cigarettes.

  I knew I would always remember that night as the first sighting. It was October. I was eighteen. I had never been separated from her. I had never left home.

  * * *

  It was a great mystery to me why this huge, heavy man with the black car was never introduced. I had a fairly clear memory of her other lovers and of the friends who appeared on rare occasions. She always brought them home. Indeed, I had the distinct impression that I was the acid test they had to pass. My inspection was a sort of initiation ritual. She was proud of me. She said so. She boasted how clever I was. If I liked the look of her companions, and she never misread my unspoken judgements, they were warmly welcomed through the external foliage and over the threshold. Usually, I did like them, although I persuaded myself that I had been wary of the man with the butterfly tattoo. She had no very close friends outside the Amazonian triangle. When she went out, it was either to attend public functions or to do something – eat, discuss, raise money – with a group. No one took precedence over me. She held others at a distance. But she used to tell me ab
out her work, her fears, her plans. Like all children confronting adult confidences, I didn’t always understand what she said, but I hoarded every word. I was intensely jealous of our quiet evenings snuggled together, half asleep, in front of an unsuitably violent thriller on the television. We were like a comfortably married pair, confident of each other’s silences, weaknesses and rhythms. Apart from the great mystery of my origins and my alienated grandparents, I had never been aware of anything hidden, unspoken, taboo. So why did this man remain her open, but unacknowledged secret? If I had wanted to raise the matter I would have had to make a scene. She gave me no opportunity to ask.

  I no longer had to be in school every day. Sometimes I came home early in the afternoon, smelling the fumes of coal fires already lit, hanging in the damp air. If she was still at college I listened to the messages on her answerphone. Her French friends of frequent phone calls and illegible postcards, ringing from the rooms dark with woodsmoke, antiques, and dim, ancestral memories of generations and generations.

  ‘Ecoute, Isobel – c’est moi, Françoise. Tu me rappelles? J’ai déjà des idées pour Noël. Bisous, bisous à toi et Toby . . .’

  The woman at the gallery who exhibited her work, and occasionally sold giant canvases for thousands, sharptoothed, aggressive, much criticized by Aunt Luce: ‘I may have a lead on that gallery in Cologne. After that huge success in Munich we mustn’t let Germany go off the boil . . . call me back asap . . .’

  Aunt Luce herself, resplendent, confident, on the crest of another huge financial connection: ‘Can you both come to dinner next Saturday? Let me know. Liberty and I are definitely off to New York at the beginning of November. It’s all fixed and I can’t wait to tell you . . .’

  . . . and at last, the voice I had waited to hear, feared to hear recorded, fixed, implicated in demand. ‘Hello’ – a pause, he doesn’t say her name – ‘I’m still in the lab . . .’

  He’s a scientist, then. Or a doctor? A pathologist? A coroner? What laboratory? Where? A hospital? A research institute, a university? Where? Does he live here? Or in London?

  ‘I’m here till eight. Call me.’

  Instinctively, I look at my watch. It is nearly three. She is not here. She will not be back until after six. Will she listen to the messages immediately? Usually she never does. Has she started doing that, hoping to hear him? Does he ring her at work? When she hears his voice, will she ring him back at once? 07710 283 180. This is his mobile number. I have neither his address nor his name. I have no concrete information. I do not hesitate. I sit down on the floor beside the phone, listening to the sizzle of the rewinding tape, watching the red light winking steadily, fluttering through her book of numbers, addresses. I have never done this before. She is not methodical. She writes new names on empty pages, any empty page, regardless of the alphabetical letters embossed on the serrated edge. There is no detectable pattern in her collection of names, numbers, addresses. It is quite arbitrary, slapped down at any angle. Here are the names of people I do not know, have never seen. I have never been interested before. Some names are crossed out, written again elsewhere, but still not under the apparently correct letter. There are numbers floating free, without locations or identities. Some have initials attached to them. I stare at blank initials, which hide everything, even the sex. It must be an institute, a hospital. I search the entire book for official addresses. I note the London numbers, which have no names attached. In desperation, for it is now nearly four o’clock, I ring one of these at random. It is a dry-cleaning service, impatient to know another number, the number on my green ticket, without which they can tell me nothing. Coat, jacket, trousers? What make? What colour? In despair I give up. I lean against the wall. Then listen to the tape again.

  The voice is steady, confident, unhurried. This is someone who is not afraid, neither of the answerphone nor of the tape. But, I realize this on the third hearing, from the question implicit in his tone, he had expected her to be there. He had missed her. Just missed her? When had he rung? He doesn’t say. And our answerphone doesn’t record the time of the messages. So she knows he would ring? Has he rung often before? Why didn’t I know? Why wasn’t I told? The boy on the floor, leaning against the comfortable tattered wallpaper of the hallway, is very near to tears. Obscurely, I feel shut out and betrayed. The prickle of tears begins at the back of my eyes, then slithers on down my face. The woman I love is slipping away. I no longer know her. She is no longer mine.

  I raise my hand to the rewind button. The answering machine is switched off. The phone suddenly rings. I jump backward, discovered, appalled. I stare at the clattering, vibrating phone, incapable of touching it again. I am absolutely certain that it is her lover, that vast, obscure and crushing presence, invisible, all-seeing, who is waiting, smirking with contempt on the other end. It rings and rings. I cower beside it, enraged and hysterical. Suddenly it is all over.

  I spent the rest of that afternoon grappling with an unseen from a Greek treatise on mathematics. The language of mathematics is biblical. Let A be equal to B. Let there be light. I found myself writing like the scribes, translating the prophets. It was a language of power. Henceforth the necessary characteristics of an axiom are: (i) That it should be self-evident; that its truth should be immediately accepted without proof. (ii) That it should be fundamental; that is, that its truth should not be derivable from any other truth more simple than itself. (iii) That it should supply a basis for the establishment of further truths. An axiom then, is a self-evident truth, which neither requires nor is capable of proof, but which serves as a foundation for further reasoning. I sat up, awash with a gust of clarity. The language of mathematics is very beautiful. My mother loves another man.

  I hear the door bang behind her. She has seen my bicycle, my new bicycle, the one she bought for my eighteenth birthday, shoved inside the gate. She shouts up the stairs. I do not reply. She goes into the kitchen. She turns on the radio. It is well after six. I hear the news headlines, floating up the landing. She opens the fridge. I hear the plastic rattle of the crisper. Electric with tension, I go down the staircase. All the bronze stair-rods are green with iron oxide, this banister loose, shaking, the carpet worn to brown threads. I see the world too close, as if I had swallowed hallucinogenic drugs. She pauses, smiling in the kitchen doorway, her old, habitual, generous wide smile, full of pleasure to see me. I am well above her height now, next year I will be taller still. Her blonde straight hair, my own is the same, swings as she turns to fling the courgettes into the sink. I cannot take my eyes off the red winking light on the answerphone in the hallway. The number four glints steadily. Four messages. But she is asking about my mathematics homework. She is telling me about another argument with her head of department about the studio budget. She is opening a bottle of mineral water, she is handing me the garlic, the one sharp knife we still possess and the chopping board. She hasn’t even looked at the answerphone. She doesn’t care.

  Like a murderer, convinced that the corpse will be discovered any minute, my gaze is fixed on the glittering, revelatory red light.

  In the midst of a quite different story she suddenly asks if there were any calls. No, I didn’t take any, but there were messages left on the machine. I cut the garlic, which is stinging my bitten cuticles, into tiny unsuitable quadrilaterals. She adds mixed dried herbs from a plastic sachet, gives the courgettes one more stir then bounds off down the hall. Why do you seem so young? You aren’t old enough to be my mother. The radio is still on, so she turns up the sound on the tape. All the voices to which I have listened, again and again, crackle and echo in the steam. I stand there, staring into the filthy sink. The French gutturals, the gallery owner’s twang, Aunt Luce’s breezy chatter, and then the pause, before that last voice begins, firm, unhurried, confident.

  ‘I’m here till eight. Call me.’

  She is still smiling as she races for the courgettes. It’s OK. Nothing urgent. As she slithers past me, pressed against the table, I catch the unmistakable, incr
iminating, pungent stench of cigarettes.

  2

  LABORATORY

  ‘Toby! Can you come downstairs for a moment? One of my friends is here and I’d like you to meet him.’

  I was practically a recluse. At school I had pitched camp in the library and risked the accusations of ‘teacher’s fucking arse-lick’. I didn’t stop working, but I had started to cut lessons. This enhanced my reputation with the back of the class. My form tutor threatened to write to my mother. I said, go ahead, do it. It was the first time I had been openly rude to one of my teachers. She stopped dead in the corridor and stared at me. I sneered slightly and bolted for home. My moment of rebellion had come at last. But I wasn’t waiting for Iso when she came back from college. I was no longer downstairs, patrolling the corridors and the kitchen, watching out for her. I had retreated to my attic. And she had not noticed. I stood up carefully. Even her voice made me feel resentful, irritated.

  ‘Toby! Did you hear me? Come down.’

  She was coming up the stairs. The figure behind her loomed in the dark at the bottom. His outline suggested the Minotaur, metamorphosed completely into man, irrefutably male, yet unequivocally bestial. She dwindled into pathos beside him. How do you do died on my lips. The man was very, very still. I felt him watching me creep down the staircase, reading my body rather than my face. My mother took my arm and led me down to him as if I was a virgin bride. Then he reached out, one huge white hand, and took mine in his. His hand felt like that of a reptile, cool, smooth, dry. I returned the handshake, transfixed with curiosity, fascination and alarm. He was wearing at least three gold rings. I said, ‘You’re the scientist.’