The Deadly Space Between

by Patricia Duncker

  I rushed back down the stairs and collapsed shaking in the kitchen. My cruelty had appeared in her flesh. I had never touched her, yet my first impulse was to blame myself. Then I remembered Roehm.

  I got up and flung open the back door. The cold air, smelling of damp turned earth, hung draped in the doorway. I sicked up the lasagne into the nearest flowerbed and then sat down on the damp back step, shivering and appalled. I had the same unsteady sensation of being paper-thin and unreal that I had had when I stepped inside the uncanny Web site. I waited, paralysed, for the cold air to enter me. My stomach steadied. I glanced back into the kitchen. The soiled plates and the remains of supper still lay upon the table, but the whole thing now looked yellow, ghastly and surreal, like an abandoned travellers’ site following an eviction, a waste space littered with rubbish and the echo of violent acts. My fingers and my face were stinging with winter cold. I shut the back door.

  When I looked closely at the kitchen again I knew that I was no longer in control of what happened in the house.

  * * *

  I rang Liberty on the following day from the phone box outside the school gates. It was covered in stencilled obscenities and still smelt faintly of summer urine. My phone card had twenty-eight units, hoarded, stored. For the first time I realized that I never spent anything. I acquired nothing. I gave nothing away. I listened to my mother’s phone calls, but I never made any of my own. Liberty was in her office. She picked up my anxiety at once.

  ‘Let me ring you back.’

  ‘What’s put the wind up you so badly, Toby?’

  ‘A Web site?’ Incredulous.

  ‘Have you quarrelled with Iso?’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to like everything she paints.’

  ‘Don’t take on so. She’ll get over it. I don’t like all of Luce’s work and she gets ratty too.’

  ‘Whadda you mean? There’s other things. What other things?’

  ‘Toby – is this anything to do with Roehm? It is? How? . . .’

  ‘You saw him sitting on another Web site in Egypt??! Toby, love, you’re not making sense. Have you been spending too much time revising?’

  ‘No. I’m not patronizing you. And I don’t think that you’re going dotty. I just can’t get a handle on what’s going on . . .’

  ‘Listen, sweetheart, don’t go home. Get on the train and come down into town. You can be here by four. And either Luce or I will drive you back. You’re all wired up and I can’t quite understand what the matter is . . .’

  ‘OK. I’ll see you very soon.’

  I ran for the train.

  Liberty had just been taken on as a pupil at 10 Court Steps in the Temple. She had access to a vast iMac G4 and a parking space shared with another junior barrister. She was also part of an informal drinking club called Bar Dykes, which was women only and aimed to advance everyone’s career. I loved going to visit Liberty in chambers. They were lodged in ivy-covered ancient buildings around a garden with the edges of the beds neatly trimmed. Court Steps looked exactly like the Cambridge college where I had been interviewed and appeared to be occupied by many of the same people. Liberty had access to methods and information. I decided to ask for help. Her pupil-master employed two ex-policewomen as private detectives. When they weren’t trailing unfaithful husbands, they bred dogs in Essex.

  I imagined the two ex-policewomen pursuing Roehm with a brace of pitbull terriers.

  Liberty was watching out for me and had warned the security guards that I was coming. One of them already knew my face so that I had no difficulty entering her courtyard kingdom.

  But when I found myself sitting safely in her room, clutching a mug of herb tea, and had begun my narrative it all sounded mad, even to me. I could not bring myself to tell Liberty about the marks I had seen upon my mother’s body. I felt too guilty and ashamed. Instead I begged her to access the Web site.

  http://www.hautmontagne.irs.org.ch

  While we were waiting for the computer to process our demands Liberty looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘Toby, is there anything concrete – and by that I mean visible proof – of which you know that would link this Web site to Roehm?’

  But before I could answer the screen exploded into life.

  So far as I could see it was all there. The images were the same. Here were the forests, the ice peaks. But the language was unintelligible. It was not even a script I recognized. There were strong thick bars across the top of every word, from which hung a sequence of dots and squiggles.

  ‘Have you read this?’ Liberty demanded.

  ‘No. It used to be in English and French. I read that.’

  ‘What language is this?’

  ‘I don’t know. It isn’t Arabic. It could be an Indian language. Maybe Hindi? Or Urdu?’

  ‘Urdu!’

  We stared at the opaque mass of text. Liberty frowned and ran her hand through her short hair. She looked like an undertaker.

  ‘Toby, I have no idea what this means, although the pictures suggest that it’s about glaciers and chamois. And you say that it went all gelatinous and seemed to suck you in.’

  I crumpled in front of her, suddenly infantile and tearful.

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  Liberty hugged me and gave me a warm kiss. She smelt of musk and fresh linen.

  ‘Now listen carefully, and concentrate. I want you to tell me every single thing you can remember about Roehm. No matter how small. How you first knew him. When you first saw him. Everything he did, everything he said. I don’t yet know what’s important. So just talk, Toby. Try to remember. I’ll take notes. Don’t be put off. Imagine I’m your barrister and you’re putting your side of the divorce case. Just tell me everything. Take your time.’

  She rang her clerk and her pupil-master. We sat in sealed and legal confidence while I floundered through a swamp of guilt and fear. I left out the key moments: the pub where I had arranged to meet Roehm, my fear that he had assaulted my mother – with her consent. The gaps in my narrative destroyed my credibility, even to myself. But there was one thing I could describe in detail, because it implicated no one else, and that was my journey across the ice. The sheer walls of blue cold were real to me. The peace and immensity of the mountains became steadily more intelligible, and, as each day followed another, closer. When I had finished Liberty gave me a long look. It was as if she guessed the details of what I had not said.

  ‘I know that something’s horribly wrong and that it’s got something to do with that man. Listen, my dear, I’ll have a word with my head of chambers. Leave it all to me. And don’t be so demoralized. I do believe you.’

  She rang me, late in the afternoon on the next day.

  ‘Toby?’

  ‘Hello, Liberty.’

  ‘Your mum there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Listen. I’ve been making some enquiries. But I don’t want her finding out.’

  ‘What sort of enquiries?’

  But I knew what she was going to say.

  ‘About Roehm.’

  ‘You ringing from work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve rung UCH,’ Liberty continued. ‘They know about the lab, but the people who work there aren’t on their payroll. It’s a government project jointly financed by a Swiss foundation about which I can find out nothing whatsoever. They didn’t know Roehm’s name when I asked if he was the director.’

  ‘He had his own key. He let himself in.’

  ‘So he must have had a security key and security clearance.’

  I couldn’t remember any security at all.

  ‘There were animals in the lab. Live animals. Monkeys, rats, birds.’

  I remembered the sad and fearful eyes of the creatures that shrank from Roehm’s dark passing.

  ‘Which is probably why it’s so secret. They’re scared of the animal rights brigade.’

  Liberty paused.

  ‘Could you find the entrance again?’

  ‘I shou
ldn’t think so. It was dark. I was a bit drunk.’

  We both breathed into our respective mouthpieces.

  ‘I’ve tried the phones. All the numbers he’s rung from go through the UCH switchboard. The mobile phone is run through Europhone, one of the smaller groups, Plutophones. But he doesn’t have a private number on a fixed line. He’s not even ex-directory.’

  ‘What about the Web site?’

  ‘Ah, your famous discovery – www.hautmontagne.irs.org.ch? Look into your computer, little cousin.’

  Liberty’s tone was ironic, frustrated.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s disappeared. There’s a notice in English. This Web site is under reconstruction. Please call back later.’

  ‘It wasn’t even in French or English any more. It probably wouldn’t have helped.’

  ‘But it would have been useful to know what language it was written in when we looked.’

  ‘It wasn’t a language I recognized. And certainly not one I’ve ever seen on the Net.’

  There was a pause between us.

  ‘Liberty. I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have him followed.’

  ‘I’ve thought of that. The girls are all ready to go. I rang them up. But I’d have to pay for it. I can’t tell Luce. She’s beginning to come round. She thinks Roehm might be OK after all. And we’d look like right plonkers if he is above board.’

  ‘But he isn’t.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Why’re you so suspicious? Why did you believe me? I had difficulty believing myself.’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘Because, Toby, my sweet, he leaves no trace. This may come as a shock to you, but I smelt a rat early on. And I’ve only ever seen him once. The car registration doesn’t exist. I’ve checked. The tax disc is fraudulent. The insurance refers back to the vanished Web site. They’re on-line insurers, based in the Haute-Savoie. The labels in his posh clothes come from no known designer, nor even a private tailor. Oh yes, I even looked inside his pockets, and apart from his cigarettes, there’s nothing. Not even a Kleenex. I don’t recognize his after-shave and he always pays in cash. He must do. Toby, this man has neither chequebook nor credit cards. He therefore cannot possibly be a fully paid-up member of the patriarchy. No one hides their tracks so carefully and turns out to be honest.’

  ‘So you think he’s a crook? Or a spy?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t think any more. I just fear that Iso may be getting herself mixed up in something weird. Or dangerous. Toby, the man is nebulous as an apparition.’

  But Roehm seemed too substantial, too fleshy and too solid to fit this description. He felt more real than I did. And it was this fact which frightened me most. I had persistent feelings of unreality, as if my familiar surroundings were fake. I was living in front of a row of one-dimensional facades, which resembled the lots at Universal Studios. I was made of painted paper, fraudulent. But Roehm was real, like the gunfighter in Westworld; he might come swinging through the saloon doors at any time.

  Iso withdrew from me during the grey days of frost. I hunted for crocuses in the garden, anything that might give her pleasure. I tried to cook suppers that did not rely on a central dish of junk food surrounded by chips. She was perfectly pleasant, but she avoided confiding in me. I felt the distance between us widen, inevitable as an expanding glacier. I circled the house like a buzzard, lonely, angry, bored. If I had had more courage I would have gone out with other people, but my noli me tangere policy at school had been all too effective. I had no close friends. The only person I trusted was Liberty.

  I bought Iso a cheeky padded red heart for Valentine’s Day and hid it underneath her letters, among the Luxurious Glass Conservatory offers and invitations to view Knock Down Curtain bargains. I watched her turn it over, puzzled. Then she picked up her knife from the breakfast table and slit the unaddressed envelope open. I saw a slim line of butter, skimming the rim. I watched her pale face change, lighten.

  ‘Oh, look!’ She was smiling. Then she said, ‘It’s from you, Toby, isn’t it?’ And she didn’t even try to hide her disappointed indifference. She didn’t bother to read the message.

  She had lit the match. I crumpled, shrivelled, then blazed up. Months of jealousy and suppressed terror that I was at last losing her detonated inside me like a landmine. Neither my feelings nor my behaviour were especially dignified. I leaped up from the table and flung my coffee cup at the fridge. The result was spectacular. Far more coffee than could ever have been in the cup drenched the front of the fridge and the cork tiles. The cup itself shattered into thousands of shards, which flew round the kitchen like shrapnel. I felt one sting my cheek. The noise exploded before us like a bomb in a litter bin.

  I was transformed into a gigantic green monster, the Incredible Hulk, and I was screaming,

  ‘You fucking bitch! You fucking sex-crazed stinking bitch! Is that all you’ve got to say to me? I live here. With you. Remember? And I’ve sent you a Valentine every year since I was in primary school. And you’ve kept them all. So what’s different now? You are. You’re the one who’s changed. You’re . . .’

  I ran out of steam and stood there, white and shaking.

  ‘Shut up, Toby and sit down,’ she yelled, her mouth taut. The adrenaline suddenly returned.

  ‘No, I fucking won’t sit down. I don’t have to listen to you any more.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You’re eighteen years old, even if you are acting like an infant, and you’re free to walk out that door any day you choose.’

  ‘Are you throwing me out?’ I hit an unfortunate top note, like an opera star on a bad day. I was terrified of losing face and bursting into tears. She sat down, and let me sweat it out. Then she spoke, her voice deadly.

  ‘Listen, Toby. I know perfectly well what this jealous scene is all about. I’ve put up with your sulks and tantrums for months. I’ve ignored your silences and prying. I’ve paid no attention to the fact that you’ve behaved like a perverted voyeur. I’ve waited for you to grow up and come to your senses. And since it’s clear that you’re not going to I may as well put all my cards on the table. I have a lover and I want him. Can’t you grasp that? Or is it beyond you? I want to sleep with him and I want to spend time with him. If he asks me to marry him I shall say yes.’

  By the time she got to the end of this speech she was banging on the table and shouting like a demented auctioneer with the last lot to sell.

  ‘Have you understood me? I’ve chosen Roehm.’

  There was one second of white-faced hesitation between us. Then I grabbed the front of her flannel shirt and hauled her upright. Two of the buttons tore off. She was so startled that she did not resist me. We were face to face. I ripped her old painting shirt open and the well-washed material gave way at once. Her breasts shuddered beneath my hands as I spun her round and yanked the shirt up her back. She fought back like a cornered stoat, jammed her elbow into my ribs and sent one of the chairs flying. A plate slithered off the table; it did not break but rocked back and forth on the cork floor. Then she punched me in the face. I sent her spinning backwards.

  ‘Is that what you want? You want a man who does that to you?’

  She staggered against the fridge and her upper arm came away from the surface sticky with dripping coffee.

  ‘Fucking hell, Toby.’

  She was afraid of me. But now I too was afraid of her. I had glimpsed her back. It was smooth, white, lightly freckled, her bony shoulder blades elegant and perfect. She did not have the shadow of a mark upon her. She stood trembling, half-naked in front of me. My penis was hot and swollen against the buttons of my jeans.

  ‘I’m . . . I didn’t . . .’

  ‘Get out of here. Get out,’ she screeched. Her entire body flinched and shrank. She was breathless.

  * * *

  I packed the minimum and set off across town. She didn’t have to order me out of the house. I wanted to put the miles between us
. I couldn’t look at her again. I was unable to cry or to speak. The day was murky and grey, the light pinched. I sat on the train and the tube holding my collection of short stories by Thomas Mann in front of me without being able to see clearly. My legs no longer obeyed my brain. I had to sit down after every hundred yards and catch my breath, as if I was scaling a vertical rock face. I was white with cold. I minced unsteadily down the slippery pavements towards Luce’s house. I saw the spotlights on in her studio, but she must have been on the phone. It was a moment or two before she opened the door.

  ‘My God, Toby! Why aren’t you at school? Oh my sweet boy, what on earth has happened to you?’

  The bruise on my cheekbone was red and swelling. Her blow was being slowly coloured into the flesh.

  I don’t think either of us ever did explain exactly what had happened. Luce spent several hours on the phone to her and came down the stairs with her eyes and jaw set, intent and savage as a cannibal. Liberty made up an ice pack to deal with the swelling. She didn’t ask too many questions either.

  ‘Looks like you’re staying with us for a while, kiddo.’

  I learned that Iso rang Luce every night to see how I was. But she didn’t ask to speak to me and I had nothing to say. My black eye was vivid and glamorous. Liberty was impressed.

  ‘She gave you a superb shiner, babe. Even Luce can’t pack a punch like that. You must have asked for it something terrible.’

  And in the weeks that followed I came to realize that I had been living under siege. I no longer waited in the kitchen, angry and sullen, for her daily return. I no longer behaved like an amateur spy, checking the post and the phone calls. I no longer lay awake at night, listening. I ceased going through the dustbins, bent on gathering evidence. I no longer ached with the pain of separation from the woman I had always loved too much, without measure or restraint. I had made our lives a hell of claustrophobic tension, unaware of the monster I had become. I stayed home from school during the rest of that first week away and slept for almost three days. I was exhausted, finished.