What Came Before He Shot Her

by Elizabeth George

  “Won’t what?” Joel asked.

  “Do their bloody puzzles.” She jerked her head at the table where the jigsaw puzzle was being assembled, and she added slyly, “It’s a test. They think I don’t realise that, but I do. They want to know what’s going on in my sub…my subconscious, and that’s how they intend to find out, so I won’t work on the puzzles. I say that if they want to know what’s in my head, why don’t they ask me directly? Why don’t I get to see a doctor? Joel, I’m meant to see the doctor once a week. Why don’t I get to see him?” Her voice had grown louder and she clutched her magazine to her chest. Next to him, Joel felt Toby start to tremble. He looked to Kendra for some sort of rescue, but she was gazing at his mother as if she were a laboratory specimen.

  “I want to see the doctor,” Carole cried. “I’m meant to see him. I know my rights.”

  “You saw him yesterday, Caro,” the first jigsaw lady informed her.

  “Just like you always do. Once a week.”

  Carole’s face clouded. On it flickered an expression so like Toby’s when he was gone from them that both Kendra and Joel drew an unsteady breath. Carole said, “Then I want to go home. Joel, I want you to speak to your father. You must do it straightaway. He’ll listen to you and you must tell him—”

  “Gavin’s dead, Carole,” Kendra told her sister-in-law. “You understand that, don’t you? He’s been dead four years.”

  “Ask him may I come home, Joel. It won’t happen again. I understand things now. I didn’t then. There was just too much…up here…Too much…Too much…Too much…” She had taken the magazine and was tapping it against her forehead. Once, twice. And then harder each time she said “Too much.”

  Joel looked to Kendra for some kind of rescue, but Kendra was out too far beyond her depth. The only rescue she could come up with was getting clear of this place as soon as possible before irreparable damage was done. Not that irreparable damage hadn’t already been done. But she suddenly wanted no more of it, no further visitation on either her or the children from fate, karma, predestination, or whatever else you wanted to call it.

  Although he couldn’t have expressed it in words, Joel understood from his aunt’s expression, her posture, and her silence that he would have to go this visit with his mother alone. There wasn’t a single nurse or orderly in the room to come to their aid, and even if there had been, Carole wasn’t harming herself. And it had been made clear from the very first time she’d ended up in this place that unless a patient meant to do harm to her body, there was no one to save her from the worst of herself.

  He sought a distraction. “Toby’s birthday’s comin, Mum. He’ll be eight years old. I haven’t worked out what to get him yet cos I don’t have much money, but I got a little. Summick like eight quid dat I been saving. I ’as thinkin maybe Gran would send money, an’ I’d be able to—”

  His mother grabbed his arm. “Speak to your father,” she hissed. “Swear you’ll speak to your father. I’m meant to come home. Do you understand me?” She pulled Joel closer to her and he caught her smell: unwashed woman and unwashed hair. He tried very hard not to jerk away.

  Toby, on the other hand, felt no such compunction. He backed away from Joel and into his aunt, saying, “C’n we go home? Joel, can we go?”

  Carole seemed to rouse from some waking sleep at this. Suddenly she noticed Toby cowering and Kendra standing above him. She said in a voice growing ever louder, “Who’s this? Who are these people, Joel? Who’ve you brought with you? Where’s Nessa, then? Where’s Ness? What’ve you done with Ness?”

  Joel said, “Ness wouldn’t…she couldn’t…Mum, this here’s Toby and Aunt Kendra. You know them. Course Toby’s gettin big now. Near eight years old. But Aunt Ken—”

  “Toby?” Carole Campbell went inward as she said the name, attempting to sort through the train wreck of her memories to find the relevant one. She rocked back on her heels and considered the little boy before her, then Kendra, trying to make sense of who these people were and, more important, trying to understand what they wanted of her. “Toby,” she murmured. “Toby. Toby.” Suddenly her face filled with light as she managed to attach Toby to an image in her mind. For his part, Joel felt an answering relief and Kendra felt the passing of a potential crisis.

  But then, as if on the edge of a coin, Carole’s comprehension slipped, and her expression crumpled. She looked directly at Toby and put her hands up—palms outward—as if she would fend him off in some way. “Toby!” she cried out, his name no longer a name to her but an accusation.

  “Tha’s right, Mum,” Joel said. “This’s Toby. Tha’s who this is, innit.”

  “I should have dropped you,” Carole cried in reply. “When I heard the train. I should have dropped you but someone stopped me. Who? Who stopped me from dropping you?”

  “No, Mum, you can’t—”

  She clutched her head, fingers deep in her ginger hair. “I must go home now. Sraightaway, Joel. Ring your father and tell him I must come home and God, God, God, why can’t I remember anything anymore?”

  Chapter

  5

  Since part of his job was to know when the pupils in his PSHE group were floundering in one area or another—after all, the class wasn’t called Personal Social Health Education for nothing—Mr. Eastbourne, who otherwise was mentally, spiritually, and emotionally consumed by an unfortunate relationship he was attempting to foster with an oft-suicidal, out-of-work actress, eventually noticed that Joel Campbell needed a bit of special attention. This became apparent to him when a colleague routed Joel from his lunchtime hiding place for the third time, delivering him to Mr. Eastbourne for an intimate colloquy that was supposed to reveal the nature of the boy’s problems. Anyone with eyes could see the nature of the boy’s problems, of course: He kept to himself, had no friends, spoke only when spoken to and not always then, and spent his free time attempting to blend into the notice boards, the furniture, or whatever else comprised the environment in which he found himself. What remained to be excavated from Joel’s psyche were the reasons for the problems.

  Mr. Eastbourne possessed one quality above all others that made him an exceptional instructor in PSHE: He knew his limitations. He disliked faux bonhomie, and he understood that spurious attempts to be matey with a troubled adolescent were unlikely to produce a positive result. So he availed himself of a member of the school’s mentoring programme, a human inventory of community members who were willing to assist pupils with everything from reading to relieving anxiety. Thus, not long after the visit to his mother, Joel found himself being ushered into the presence of an odd-looking Englishman.

  He was called Ivan Weatherall, a white man on the far side of fifty who favoured hunting jackets with tatty leather in all the appropriate places as well as baggy tweed trousers worn too high on the waist and held there with both braces and a belt. He had appalling teeth but exceptionally nice breath, chronic dandruff but freshly washed hair. Manicured, closely shaven, and polished where polish was called for, Ivan Weatherall knew what it was to be an outsider, having endured both fagging and bullying at boarding school, as well as possessing a libido so low as to make him a misfit from his thirteenth birthday right into his dawning old age.

  He had a most peculiar way of speaking. So anomalous was it to what Joel was used to—even from his aunt—that at first he concluded Ivan Weatherall was having a monumental joke at Joel’s own expense. He used terms like Right-o, I dare say, Spot on, and Cheerio, and behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, his blue eyes locked on Joel’s and never looked away, as if he were waiting for a reaction. This forced Joel into either giving him one, meeting his gaze, or looking elsewhere. Most of the time he chose to look elsewhere.

  He and Ivan met twice a week during PSHE, tucked away in an office made available for the mentoring programme. Ivan began their relationship with a formal bow from the waist, and, “Ivan Weatherall, at your service. I haven’t seen you hereabouts. How pleasant to meet you. Shall we perambulate or is r
emaining stationary your preference?”

  To this bizarre opening, Joel made no reply since he thought the man was having him on.

  Ivan said, “Then I shall make the decision. As rain appears imminent, I suggest we avail ourselves of what seating accommodations are on offer.” Then he ushered Joel into the little office, where he deposited his gangly frame into a red plastic chair and hooked his ankles round its front legs.

  “You’re a relative newcomer to our little corner of the world, I understand,” he said. “Your habitation is…where? One of the estates, I believe? Which one?”

  Joel told him, managing to do so without looking up from his hands, which played with the buckle on his belt.

  “Ah, the location of Mr. Goldfinger’s grand building,” was Ivan’s reply. “Do you live inside that curious structure, then?”

  Joel correctly assumed that Ivan was referring to Trellick Tower, so he shook his head.

  “Pity,” Ivan Weatherall said. “I live in that general area myself, and I’ve wanted to explore that building forever. I consider it all a bit grim—well, what can one do with concrete besides make it look like a minimum-security prison, don’t you agree?—and yet those bridges…floor after floor of them…They do make a statement. I dare say one still wishes that London’s postwar housing problems could have been solved in a more visually pleasing manner.”

  Joel raised his head and ventured a look at Ivan, still trying to work out if he was being made fun of. Ivan was watching him, head cocked to one side. He’d altered his position during his prefatory remarks, leaning back so that his chair rested only on its two back legs. When Joel’s eyes met his, Ivan gave him a little friendly salute. “Entre nous, Joel,” he said in a confidential tone, “I’m a type one generally refers to as an English eccentric. Quite harmless and engaging to have at a dinner party where Americans are present and declaring themselves desperate to meet a real Englishman.” They were hard enough to come by in this part of town, he went on to tell Joel, especially in his own neighbourhood, where the small houses were mostly occupied by large Algerian, Asian, Portuguese, Greek, and Chinese families. He himself lived alone—“Not even a budgerigar to keep me company”—but he liked it that way, as it gave him time and space to pursue his hobbies. Every man, he explained, needed a hobby, a creative outlet through which one’s soul earned expression. “Have you one yourself?” he inquired.

  Joel ventured a reply. The question seemed harmless enough. “One what?”

  “A hobby, a soul-enriching extracurricular endeavour of one form or another?”

  Joel shook his head.

  “I see. Well, perhaps we can find you one. This will, naturally, involve a minor bit of probing with which I will ask you to cooperate to the best of your ability. You see, Joel, we are creatures of parts. Physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and psychological parts. We are akin to machines, if it comes down to it, and every mechanism that makes us what we are needs to be attended to if we are to function both efficiently and to our utmost capacity. You, for instance. What do you intend to do with your life?”

  Joel had never been asked such a question. He knew, of course, but he was embarrassed to admit it to this man.

  “Well, then, that is part of what we’ll search for,” Ivan said. “Your intentions. Your path to the future. I myself, you see, longed to be a film producer. Not an actor, mind you, because at the end of the day I could never abide people ordering me about and telling me how to act. And not a director because I could also never abide being the one doing the ordering. But producing…Ah, that was my love. Making it happen for others, giving their dreams life.”

  “Did you?”

  “Produce films? Oh yes. Twenty of them, as it happens. And then I came here.”

  “Whyn’t you in Hollywood, then?”

  “With a starlet hanging from my every appendage?” Ivan shuddered dramatically, then smiled, revealing his tortured teeth. “Why, I’d made my point. But that’s a conversation for another time.”

  Over the ensuing weeks, they had many such conversations, although Joel kept his darkest secrets to himself. So while Ivan knew that Joel and his siblings lived with their aunt, he didn’t know precisely why. And while he knew that Joel’s responsibility was to stop by Middle Row School for Toby so that the little boy did not have to walk anywhere alone, where Joel actually took Toby and why he did so were topics that never came up between him and his assigned mentor. As for Ness, Ivan knew that she was a chronic truant whose attendance problems had not been resolved by the single phone call made from the admissions officer to Kendra Osborne.

  Other than that, Ivan did most of the talking. Joel, listening, grew used to the eccentricities of the older man’s speech. He actually found himself liking Ivan Weatherall, as well as looking forward to their meetings. But this factor in their relationship—the liking part of it—made Joel even more reluctant to speak honestly with him. Should he do so, which he assumed was the purpose of their visits, he believed that he would be seen as “cured” of whatever the school had decided ailed him. Cured, he would no longer need to meet with Ivan, and he didn’t wish that to happen.

  It was Hibah who revealed a way that Joel might keep Ivan chatting in his life even if the school decided that it was no longer necessary. Near the fourth week of their meetings, she saw Joel emerging from the library with the Englishman, and she plopped down next to Joel on the number 52 bus later that afternoon to put him into the picture.

  She began with, “You seeing that mad English bloke, eh? You watch out f’r him.”

  Joel, working on a maths problem he’d been given for homework, didn’t at first take note of the menace behind her words. He said, “Wha’?”

  “Tha’ Ivan bloke. Hangs round kids, he does.”

  “’S his job, innit.”

  “Not talkin ’bout school,” she said. “Other places is where. You been over to Paddington Arts?”

  Joel shook his head. He didn’t even know what Paddington Arts was, let alone where it was.

  Hibah told him. Paddington Arts was a centre for creative works, not far from the Grand Union Canal and just off the Great Western Road. Classes were offered there—yet another stab at giving the area’s youth something to do besides head into trouble—and Ivan Weatherall was one of the instructors.

  “So he says,” Hibah told Joel. “I hear otherwise.”

  “From who?” Joel asked.

  “My boyfriend’s who. He say Ivan got a thing for boys. Boys just like you, Joel, innit. Mixed boys, he likes, an’ my boyfriend oughta know.”

  “Why?”

  She rolled her large eyes expressively. “You can figger. You not thick or summick, are you? Anyways, more’n jus’ my boyfriend say it. Older blokes’s grew up in the area. Tha’ bloke Ivan, he been round here forever, an’ it’s always been the same wiv him. You watch yourself’s what I’m saying.”

  “He never do nothing but talk wiv me,” Joel told her.

  Again the eye roll. “Don’ you know nuffink? Tha’s how it always begin,” she said.

  KENDRA’S LIE TO the admissions officer at Holland Park School comprised the reason that it took several weeks for the next level of educational concern to be triggered regarding Ness’s lack of attendance. During this time, Ness carried on much as before, with only a slight variation, leaving the house with her brothers and parting from them in the vicinity of Portobello Bridge. What made it look to her aunt as if she were actually attending school this time around was the fact that she no longer carried a change of clothes in her rucksack but rather two notebooks and a geography text pinched from Six’s brother, the Professor. Her change of clothes she merely left at Six’s.

  Kendra chose to be soothed into belief by this. It was the path of least resistance. It was also, unfortunately, only a matter of time before that path went from bumpy to impassable.

  It was late March and in the midst of a classic English downpour when several occasions conspired against her. The first of
these occurred when a lithe and well-dressed black man entered the charity shop, shook off a tan umbrella, and asked to speak to Mrs. Osborne. He was Nathan Burke, he said, the education officer from Holland Park School.

  Cordie Durelle was in the shop with Kendra, on her break from the Princess European and Afro Unisex Hair Salon. As before, she was smoking. As before, she wore her purple smock, with her surgical mask slung around her neck. She and Kendra had been discussing Gerald Durelle’s recent inebriated and destructive hunt through the house for what he assumed—correctly—had to be the birth control pills, which he believed were keeping his wife from becoming pregnant with the son he desired, and Cordie had just reached the climax of her tale when the shop door opened and its bell rang.

  Their conversation ceased as if by telepathic agreement, largely because Nathan Burke was breathtaking and both of the women needed to take that breath. He spoke politely and precisely, and he moved across the shop to the counter with the confidence of a man who’d had a decent upbringing, a decent education, and a life spent largely outside of England and in an environment where he’d been treated as the equal of everyone else.

  Burke asked which one of the ladies was Mrs. Osborne and could he speak to her on a private matter. Kendra identified herself cautiously and told him he could speak in front of her best friend, Cordie Durelle. Cordie shot her a grateful glance at this, for she always appreciated being in the presence of an attractive man. She lowered her eyelids and attempted to look as sultry as a woman in a purple smock and surgical mask can look.

  Nathan Burke didn’t have the time to notice her, however. He’d been paying visits to the parents of Holland Park’s truant pupils since nine o’clock that morning, and he had five more to get through before he could end his day and finally go home to the sympathetic ministrations of his life partner. Because of this, he got directly to the point. He brought out the relevant attendance records and broke the news to Kendra.