by Jane Rogers
‘Is there – did he leave a phone number?’
‘Madam, he did.’
When she has written everything down El hangs up the phone and sits staring at it. He is alive. In Italy. In a strange man’s house. As far as she knows, Con doesn’t speak Italian. Relief and fear are enough to paralyse her for a moment. He’s found. But he’s ill. And, since he hasn’t phoned her, she has to assume he doesn’t want to see her. Unless he is too ill to phone? What is he – what was he – up to? Her impulse to phone Alberto’s number dies. She paces the house for twenty minutes then checks flights to Bologna. There’s one late this afternoon from Manchester, seats are available.
She goes up to Cara’s room and tells her, and suddenly Cara is focused and energised, though tears are running down her face.
‘We should phone him right now, Mum. The Italian.’
‘That was my first thought. But we don’t really know what’s going on. Maybe it would be better just to go there. If Con wanted us to know where he was, he would have phoned. His mobile’s still off, I tried it. If he’s too ill to phone then we can’t talk to him anyway. And if this man – Alberto – was lying, then phoning will give him warning that we are coming, do you see?’
‘But he’s there —’
‘Yes, and we can be there by this evening. There’s a flight at 3.45.’
‘Would they have told him? That the bank has contacted the police?’
El shrugs. ‘There are too many unknowns. We don’t know why he’s there, we don’t know what state he’s in, we only have a stranger’s word for it that he is there. If we go to the house unannounced – say we get there early evening – he won’t be expecting us. We’re more likely to find something out than if we ring and give him time to vanish.’
Cara is shaking her head. ‘But why would he want to vanish?’
‘Darling, it’s what he’s done. We don’t know why. But if he started by doing that, we have to assume he still doesn’t want us to know where he is.’
Eleanor books their flight. With phoning the other children, and packing, and downloading maps of Bologna and booking a hotel on a street close to Alberto’s address, the morning is gone and they are on the plane before there’s time to think again. Cara looks terrible, and though El tells herself she couldn’t have left her alone at home, she knows she could have asked Paul to stay with her. El’s notion that she is bringing Cara for Cara’s own good is countered by the knowledge that she is bringing Cara for El’s own good. Con will want to see Cara, whereas he might not want to see El. In that sense she is using Cara, and the girl looks on the point of collapse. El will make everything easy. They’ll get a taxi from the airport, drop their things at the hotel then go straight on to Alberto’s. Whatever happens there, she will get Cara back to the hotel for food and sleep before it is too late. El squashes down the bubble of hope which keeps trying to rise in her chest.
She turns over in her mind whether there might be danger. Whether she might be walking – and walking Cara – into a trap. If Alberto is a front, for kidnappers, say, and El and Cara deliver themselves to his door… But what is the point in kidnapping a whole family? And making no ransom demands? And El has left Alberto’s address with the other kids; she has promised to ring them later tonight. Things will swing into action pretty quickly if she doesn’t call them.
The problems begin before they even land. The time for their descent into Bologna airport has already passed when an announcement is made by their pilot. ‘Weather conditions on the ground are now unfavourable. There is a fog. We will follow a holding pattern and wait to see if conditions improve. On the advice of the control tower we will take time. Apologies for the delay to your journey.’ From the babble of other passengers El deduces that this is not uncommon in Bologna and that if the fog persists the pilot will divert to Milan. Cara begins to cry. El puts her arm around the girl’s skinny shoulders and tries not to cry herself. She is coming round to believing that this is some kind of punishment: that in every protracted detail since Con’s non-return, she is being punished for her heedless selfishness, for her busy careless irresponsible life, for the happy El that she has been. Now she must submit to fate. She has no control.
And indeed there is no situation she can imagine where one has less control than in an aeroplane. Twice the pilot makes his descent, and glints of airport lights are briefly visible through the dense black cloud. But on each occasion he rears back up into the sky, the engines screaming, the passengers silent and white-faced. After the second attempt he announces that the tower reports the fog is lifting slightly and that he will make one final attempt before abandoning and diverting to Milan.
Cara is shaking. El is a seasoned air traveller, she knows they are unlikely to die – and yet that fear is so all-consuming that it has engulfed the entire planeload. They have been reminded that they are in a tin can thousands of feet above the earth and that only those screaming engines and the pilot’s skill stand between them and a plummet to the ground. When a suicide attempt becomes real – when the tablets are in the mouth, or the feet balanced on the span of the bridge – how can anyone ever go through with it? El wonders. The will to live is so strong, so intense and unthinking, how can it be annulled? She wonders if Con thought of suicide before he took off. If running away (which is what she now guesses he has done) was a coward’s suicide? She can’t call him a coward, though. Since his absence has reduced her to an abject state. He was conscious of something that she was not prepared to admit. Their failure, their cruelty to one another, the wasting of their lives; she pretended to be oblivious, and Conrad, he acknowledged it. She is in no position to call him a coward.
The third attempt at landing seems to happen in slow motion, the descent taking place through complete blackness. El finds herself physically braced and desperate for the abort, the upward lurch – when the engine sound changes, and with a shocking jolt they are on the runway. The airport lights appear through shifting swathes of fog. They are taxiing along the runway, they are on the ground and heading for the light. As their shock disperses, the passengers begin, raggedly, to applaud.
Everything is slow. Freezing fog lingers in the narrow streets of Bologna. The taxi they have patiently queued for takes them as far as a traffic jam then sits there; the only thing moving is the meter. Glimpses of the streets in the foggy darkness reveal ancient buildings with barred windows, everything shut up and closed against them. At their hotel El decides Cara should go to bed immediately but Cara refuses, and so they are out into the icy blackness again. Their taxi driver, who insisted on payment when they arrived, has gone, and anyway Alberto’s address is within walking distance. The hotel receptionist gives them a coloured tourist map of the city and draws in biro the line they should follow. El takes Cara’s arm but Cara shakes her off, and so they move singly along the murky street. The streets are more like alleyways, and other dark figures materialise suddenly, their footsteps muffled by the fog. Lamps are visible as haloed blobs, illuminating a few inches of fog around them but shedding no light on the street. El can’t see which way up to hold the map, never mind the biro line. The air is cold and heavy with moisture, El is gasping for breath, her lungs half-suffocated. She can think of nothing but danger now. Her own skin and hair are wet, which means Cara’s will be too. She’s an idiot, she should have waited till morning. Now they are heading uphill under covered arches. In the empty roadway the fog has lifted, but it still drifts under the arches, revealing and then closing off their route. She peers at numbers on the ancient doors; the place is silent and closed up as if all the inhabitants are sleeping or dead. El checks her watch, just after 8pm, it’s not late – then remembers 8pm UK is 9pm Italian time. Well, too bad, they are here; they are wet and cold and bedraggled and perhaps asking for trouble, but she knocks hard on the door and stands, shoulders squared, between Cara and the door, waiting for it to open.
When Alberto ushers them into Con
’s room, Cara runs to hug him. When she has settled, curled on the bed beside him, her head nestled into Con’s shoulder, he looks up to meet Eleanor’s eyes. She waits in the doorway.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says at last but Conrad is speaking too, at the same instant. ‘What? What did you say?’ she asks.
‘I said I’m sorry.’
‘We’re both —’
‘Yes,’ he says.
Now she’s able to move forward and kiss him and take in the unhealthy heat of his skin, his pallor, his red eyes. ‘You’ve got flu.’
‘Or something like it, yes. Alberto has been taking good care of me.’
She sinks to her knees on the opposite side of the bed to Cara, and Con reaches awkwardly to put his arm around her shoulders. She is suddenly embarrassed at the thought of Alberto watching this maudlin scene, but when she wipes her eyes and looks up, he is gone and the door is closed. She moves the lamp off the small bedside table and sits on the table, taking Con’s warm hand between hers.
‘Have you got somewhere to stay?’ he asks.
‘Hotel, it’s quite near. Shall I come and fetch you in the morning?’
He nods.
El knows there is all the time in the world now to talk, but still she can’t make herself wait. ‘Were you running away from me?’
Con takes a long time to answer and she wishes she hadn’t asked, especially with Cara listening. ‘It’s hard to say. I didn’t start with the intention of running at all. No, I didn’t start by running away from you.’
El’s eyes well up again. What if she had lost him? ‘I love you,’ she whispers.
Amazingly, Con grins at her. A ghost of the old Conrad grin. ‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘I love you too.’
‘And me,’ comes Cara’s muffled voice from Conrad’s shoulder.
‘And you, my little Cara.’ He turns his head on the pillow and plants a kiss on her hair.
The three of them cling to one another in silence.
In the morning it is decided they will stay at the hotel until Con is fit to travel. Cara’s constant presence makes it impossible for Con and El to talk, which is good, El realises. He is weak and sleepy and still running a temperature. There are lots of things it is better not to say. It is Cara who asks Con about what happened to him, and his explanation – that he is fed up with his work and wanted a day or two on his own to decide whether to quit – is plausible enough, as is his request that they should take a present of some kind to Alberto, who has played the Good Samaritan.
El leaves Cara with Con and goes in search of expensive chocolates and wine. A work crisis followed by illness and collapse is an explanation that everyone will be able to understand and El wonders if, in fact, she wants to know any more than this. He left without telling her, without talking to her, and for reasons which may not all be to do with her. The issue of Mad – of another woman, if there is or was one – isn’t it better to let it lie? Conrad is not with Mad, after all. And that would be the only real betrayal, El realises – if he actually left her for another woman. She can see, they both know, he wanted her to find him. And he must know that she wanted to find him. That any sense of relief at his absence lasted for all of ten minutes. That without him she made no sense – none of them did, the family made no sense without him. If he doesn’t know it then she can tell him. But there’s no rush.
Chapter 15
Paul, Megan and Dan are all at the house when Conrad, Eleanor and Cara arrive home from Bologna. Megan has organised a meal to welcome them. Sitting at table, the centre of their attention, Con feels overwhelmed, like a child at his own birthday party. There’ll be tears soon, he imagines himself saying. Each of them has worried about him and grieved for him; he is unworthy.
‘Did you honestly think we wouldn’t worry?’ says Megan. ‘You thought no one would notice you’d gone?’
‘Well,’ says Con. ‘Well, you’d notice, of course. But I suppose I didn’t imagine it would upset you unduly… I mean, you’ve all got busy lives.’
‘So busy we don’t care what happens to our father,’ remarks Paul acidly.
‘Paul thought I’d murdered you,’ El contributes.
There is a moment Con can’t read, as Paul and El lock eyes. He decides to laugh. ‘Well, I’m not sure I would have blamed her. I was miserable company.’
‘It’s not a crime to be miserable,’ says El softly. Con really is afraid he will cry.
‘Paul said the police will assume it was the spouse. I told him he was being stupid,’ says Cara.
Con glances at her thin white face, and at her plate. ‘I hope you don’t think you’ve finished,’ he tells her.
‘For God’s sake, Dad! I’m an adult!’
‘Then eat like one.’
‘Ba – bum!’ goes Paul, and Dan pats his palm against the table for applause. El glances at him and laughs. There are so many of them, El and Dan and Cara and Megan and Paul, so bright and big and noisy, Con wants to take in each one of them properly and rejoice in their presence but the conversation keeps jumping on and changing and they fire questions at him which he can’t answer and by the end of the meal he is dizzy with their energy and speed.
It is extraordinary to be home. Everything is so poignant – so precious. In the morning, before the children are up, his and El’s breakfast mugs and plates wait to be cleared, one last slice of toast leaning crookedly against the marmalade. They woke early and the two of them sat here facing each other across the table and ate their breakfast together. That’s when he told her about Maddy. These crumby plates bear witness. The low winter sunlight slants in through the Victorian window he put in on the landing, with blue and red glass in its corners. It stains the white wall of the staircase red, blue, red, blue. The banister rail is smooth beneath his hand; it has been painted white, then blue, then sanded back to the bare wood and varnished, during the years that they have lived here. There is the quiet bedroom where he and El sleep in that big double bed, he with two soft pillows, she with one hard. His garden, desolate and sodden but showing the first hints of spring; a cluster of snowdrops, spears of daffodil leaves, a blackbird singing.
He feels as weak and grateful as a convalescent.
‘You are a convalescent,’ El tells him. ‘You’ve been ill. You need to give yourself time.’
He will. On Monday he’ll go to the doctor and get a sick note. It is amazing that he can be here in this beautiful house which belongs to him and El; with his wife, whom he loves; with his children.
It is only after they have all departed on Sunday afternoon that he and El really have the place to themselves. He wanders into his work room and contemplates the gaps left by the removal of his files and in-trays. Presumably the police will return things now he’s home. When they do, perhaps he’ll have a bonfire. El appears in his doorway.
‘D’you fancy a walk? The sun’s shining.’
‘Good idea.’
‘Just a short one,’ she says. ‘You old invalid.’
‘The canal and then back along the old railway line?’
El nods and they put on boots and coats in silence. Once they are off the road she takes his hand. There’s a fitful wind and the low sun flickers between heavy clouds. He notices that the hawthorn beside the path has tiny buds like hard little nipples. Out here, in the cold air, it is possible to breathe.
‘Well,’ he says.
‘Well,’ says El.
He wants to be honest. ‘I’m not very good at answering your questions because so much was wrong. I mean, everything was wrong.’
‘I know. That’s to say, I didn’t know. But once you were gone I worked it out.’
‘For you as well?’
She shrugs. ‘Work is fine. It usually is. I suppose because it is, I immerse myself in it and I let everything else go to hell.’
‘I was a drag on you.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I don’t quite know. How it got to that stage. I suppose he’s the cleverest person in the department; he understands without me having to explain. He’s quick, he’s funny —’
‘So. What will you do?’
She stops abruptly, pulling Con round to face her. ‘I’m telling the truth, you fool. Can’t you see we have to?’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘I’ve finished with him. I understand how crap it was.’
Con holds still, forcing himself not to ask how Louis has taken the news. El looks back up the path then returns her gaze to his. ‘I want to be with you.’
He allows a grin to break across his face. ‘Thank you, my Lady.’
‘Idiot,’ she says, flapping at his arm with her free hand, and moving on down the hill. ‘Idiot.’
‘Yes, I am. I could see myself, like a great blot. But it all got so knotted up I could never talk to you about it – the awfulness of the animal house and Gus and everyone ignoring me, and then Maddy and the threats and the damage she was doing, which was all my fault… I couldn’t see a way out and I couldn’t see a way to tell you. I thought you would despise me.’
‘Oh Con.’
‘Well, why not? I was despicable.’
There’s a silence. They walk on down the steep, gritty path towards the canal and a string of geese pass, honking overhead. ‘I was impatient,’ she says eventually. ‘I’m always too impatient.’
Con shrugs. ‘You wanted me to be a success and I wasn’t.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true. I just wanted you to be as involved in your work as I was.’
‘To make it OK for you to ignore me.’