by David Abbott
40
Unlike his parents, Hal believed in heaven.
One morning before class, Miss Martha had told him that his grandma had been in so much pain that God had wanted her in heaven where he could take care of her. This had seemed sensible to Hal. In his world, the grown-ups looked after the children and God looked after the grown-ups.
After school, he had asked his mother if she, too, thought that Grandma was in heaven.
“Perhaps she is.”
Jane had been anxious to comfort her son, but true to her own atheism, unwilling to be more than noncommittal. She would have liked to tell Hal the truth: that his grandmother had been ill and had died, that he would never see her again—anywhere.
Tom thought such honesty needlessly brutal and had cut in with a warning glance.
“Of course she’s in heaven—definitely.”
But it had been too late. Hal knew what his mother’s “perhaps” meant. It meant we might not go to the beach. It meant he might not have an ice cream. It meant that Grandma might not be in heaven.
When he thought about it, he was troubled. Miss Martha was a teacher, so he ought to believe her, but he also knew that his mother did not lie. It was very confusing—if Grandma Nessa was not in heaven, then where was she?
Over the next few days he was quieter than usual, content to curl up on his father’s lap after school. At the weekend, for the first time in months, he wet his bed.
In the past, Tom had always known how to help his son through the spasms of sadness that occasionally laid him low. At two, the boy’s grief had been easy to spot and simple to remedy. When thwarted, Hal would fall to the floor, facedown and mute, a tiny package of frozen misery. Sometimes Tom would lie beside him, saying nothing, prone as the boy himself, waiting it out. Before long, Hal would turn on his side and pull his father’s hair, a signal that the sulk was over.
At other times, Tom would step over his son and disappear into the kitchen, saying he had things to do. Inevitably, he made a noise, several noises, in fact. The double click of two tumblers hitting the kitchen counter, the cushioned clatter of the refrigerator door being opened and closed, and then the hiss of escaping bubbles as Tom pulled the tab on a can of cola. Wonder of wonders, Hal would be back on his feet, grinning at the kitchen door.
But this present sadness was different—different, too, from the misery of sickness. Tom had seen Hal passive and bewildered by fever; had lain with him throughout the night, gratuitously inhaling the vapor rub on his son’s pillow. These things he had known, and known how to handle, but what ailed his son now was loss and he did not know how to help.
The bed-wetting stopped, but Hal’s vitality did not return. Tom and Jane tried diversions.
At the Burnhams’ for Sunday lunch, they had asked one of Hal’s cousins to bring his new puppy, a white Parsons terrier with one eye ringed in black. The dog’s cheerfulness was contagious. Its floppy running had made Hal laugh, but in the car going home he was pensive.
“When is Grandpa Henry coming?”
“Next weekend. He’s driving up to see the new house.”
He decided he would ask his grandfather about Nessa. He would know where she was.
Henry arrived on Saturday, one day after Nessa’s trunks. He had asked Tom to drive over to White Horse Farm and take delivery. In the boot of the Mercedes, Henry had packed a rolled-up futon, a sleeping bag, and the small video-playing television from his bedroom in London. He planned to open the trunks, play some of the tapes, and sleep one night in the empty house. He stopped at the supermarket in Swaffham and bought what he needed for his short stay.
It was late June and the garden was in its full glory. He saw that Tom had been over to cut the grass. It all looked perfect. In years to come, he would discover that White Horse Farm was blessed. Lying in a shallow valley and sheltered by woods to the northeast, it escaped the worst of the winter winds and summer came early. It was a garden where roses thrived and fruit always ripened. By September, the vines on the south-facing walls would be heavy with grapes. But even on that first morning, before he had absorbed the full extent of his luck, he knew that leaving London for this house would be no hardship.
He found the keys where Tom had left them in the barn and decided to walk the boundaries before going inside. From the vegetable garden, part of an upper lawn that had once been a tennis court, Henry paused to look down at the house, sprawling like a contented cat in the morning sunshine. It seemed a far cry from the King’s Road.
“You know who I am, don’t you?”
It had been done on impulse. Seeing her, it had seemed the right thing to do. He had wanted to get rid of the damn things and she should know the kind of man she was protecting.
She had nodded.
“These were put through my letterbox a few weeks ago. Don’t open them here. No one else has seen them.”
He had put the envelope on the counter.
“I’m sorry. I really am.”
On the street, he had felt elated. The thing was over, done with. He was leaving London and if the girl had any sense she would leave Colin whatever-his-name-was and get her life back to normal. The sooner he put the Chelsea house on the market the better. He would see to it after the weekend.
Now he was here in the clean, wholesome air of Norfolk. He walked down the grassy slope towards the house.
Nessa’s trunks had been meticulously organized. There was an index of the contents in each trunk and each item—be it diary, file, script, photograph album, or tape—had been individually labeled.
He looked at the tapes first. In her films she had always been the on-camera interviewer. It had been one of her strengths. Each documentary had been a personal testament. It was her voice you heard, her face you saw, and her truth that filled each frame.
In 1980, she had been allowed into a woman’s prison and The Girls Inside had chronicled the lives of the inmates of Cell Block C over a period of three years. It was the series that had made her name. Nessa had persuaded the commissioning editor to let her shoot the films in black and white, using 16-millimeter film. This was considered quite a coup, for film was no longer the format of choice at the BBC. Tape was cheaper and more versatile, but Nessa had wanted film for its extra quality and had fought, charmed, and cajoled to get it.
She had been honest in her portrayal of prison life and much of the footage had been bleak, but by using extreme close-ups and long takes, she had created a visual style that raised the films above conventional fly-on-the-wall reportage.
Many of the inmates had been young and Nessa had captured their vulnerability. One story line had followed a woman who had given birth in the prison, her confinement being all the more moving for being literal. The tone of the films had been established early with the opening titles. They were played against shots of the exercise yard at dawn. Nessa had scattered birdseed on the ground and on the sills of the barred windows. As the prisoners slept in their cells, birds were seen flying in and out of the yard at will. It had been an obvious piece of imagery, but she had been lucky, for the night before the filming it had started to snow and the flakes were still falling as the camera turned. She had removed the lens hood and allowed the snow to gradually blur the glass, like a curtain of tears.
Henry had suggested that she use a track of Bill Evans playing “Danny Boy” as background music to the title sequence. The piece had been recorded in April 1962, the first time Evans had been near a piano for nine months. He had been mourning the death in a road accident of Scott La Faro, the bass player in the first Bill Evans trio. The April recording had been planned as an introduction to the trio’s enforced new lineup, but this particular track turned out to be about the past. It was plainly a lament for Scott.
In the recording you can feel the grief as Evans slowly introduces the familiar melody. So halting is his progress, you wonder if he is going to make it. Time after time, you feel he has held back the note far too long, and then—and then—just as you know
for certain he has lost all continuity, the note falls, as right and as wanted as the delayed thrust in lovemaking.
The mix had been perfect and Nessa had fought hard to extend the opening sequence so that it could end on a natural break for the music. The sequence ran for two minutes and thirty-four seconds, an indulgence, but the softly falling snow and the music had moved in unison and the effect had been heartbreaking. He watched the films for three hours, fast-forwarding to the sections where Nessa appeared on screen. At 2:00 he got a sandwich from the kitchen and went out into the garden. Swallows swooped in and out of the barns.
In the afternoon he started on the home movies. They were as polished as her documentaries, expertly edited with sync sound and full effects. Watching them, he had felt like a man locked out of his own house. Every frame had hurt. One beach sequence of Hal attempting cartwheels to the corny drum roll of the circus tent had sent him out into the garden for air.
He was still outside when Tom and Hal arrived.
“Can I leave him with you for an hour? He’s been nagging me about coming over all morning.”
“Of course, I could use a bit of company, especially Hal’s.”
They went into the front room. The tape was still running and the boy quickly squatted down in front of the television set. Henry, in his ignorance, was worried that he was sitting too close to the screen but said nothing.
“Do you remember that holiday?”
“Oh, yes.”
When it was over, Hal had pleaded to watch one more tape. Henry chose one of the Norfolk series, a film of a boat trip to watch the seals basking out on Blakeney Point. Hal had cried out with pleasure when Tom had taken over the camera and filmed Nessa taking off her Wellington boots. She had solemnly turned them upside down. There must have been two liters of North Sea in each boot.
Afterwards, Hal and Henry had sat on the high bank in the garden, sharing a plate of jam sandwiches. They were still there, talking, when Tom arrived to take Hal home.
In the days that followed, Hal resumed the walks with his father. He did not know why he felt happier, he just did.
41
Eileen took her time leaving Colin. For three weeks she lived with him as though nothing had happened. She never mentioned the Polaroids and tried to keep out of his way. She volunteered to work three Sundays in a row.
“Two of the girls are sick,” she told him.
He walked away.
“They asked if I could help out,” she said.
After that, he had been silent for days, coming out of his darkroom only to eat or use the loo.
She had been dreading sex, but it had been surprisingly easy to avoid. He hadn’t shown any interest, and when he finally did come near her, she said she was not in the mood and he backed off. Despite herself, she felt annoyed that he had not put up more of a fight.
She had told them at work that she was having trouble with an ex-boyfriend who had turned into a bit of a stalker and they had agreed to transfer her to a branch in North London.
“If a man comes in asking for me, you know nothing, right?”
She had found a flat share through a friend. It was in Highbury, a short bus ride from the new shop and far away from Ebury Street.
She phoned her mum and said that Colin had become weird and moody and she was leaving him.
“If he gets in touch, tell him you don’t know where I am.”
“Well, I don’t, do I? Where are you?”
“With a friend—I’m all right—don’t worry.”
It was done. She was all set, ready to go.
Twenty-four days after Henry had walked into Body Shop, Eileen walked out on Colin. She left an envelope on the table containing the three Polaroids cut up into small pieces.
Colin would twig where the photographs had come from, but so what? She wanted him to know why she had left. The pictures were meant to be private. Just for them, he had said. When the bloke from Chelsea had come into the shop he had seemed quite nice, but later she had noticed the thumbprints all over the pictures. What did that make her? She was not some low-life porn queen. She didn’t give a fuck what happened to him—or Colin. She was out of it—she was gone.
As it turned out, covering her tracks proved to be unnecessary. Colin never tried to find her. True, she might have made him some money, but she was never going to be big-time and, anyhow, his anger was directed elsewhere. He was surprised that Henry had given Eileen the Polaroids. It had served no purpose other than malice. Not a nice thing to do. Not a nice thing at all.
That evening, he put the envelope with the torn pictures into a drawer and cleaned the flat. He put fresh sheets on the bed and opened the windows. Eileen, for all her looks, had been a bit of a slut in the homemaking department. Running his finger around the plughole of the bathroom sink he had pulled out a coil of her hair, gritty now with a residue of soap and toothpaste. He dropped it into the loo before washing his hands. In the bathroom cabinet, he found a pile of used cotton buds. He picked them up with a tissue.
When night came he slept diagonally in his bed for the first time in a year. He relished the space, the absence of her.
Three weeks later he was feeling less calm. His redundancy money was running out and as he had feared, there were no scaffolding jobs on offer. Morris had indeed put the word out. At Metro, one of the bigger companies, where Colin had worked in the past, the boss had made it personal.
“I couldn’t hire you, Colin, could I? See, I’m a bit of an animal lover. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, well thanks for nothing.”
“I’d be thinking about a change of career, if I were you.”
With nothing to do, Colin walked the streets with his camera. He had made money in the past selling London scenes to the picture libraries. It was a hit-and-miss business, but sometimes you got lucky.
On the third morning he was sitting in a Starbucks on the Brompton Road. Through the window he was watching two young women at an outside table. One of the girls was talking. She was a wispy thing, long in the face with a bad complexion. He was not tempted to take her picture; the girl was worse than ordinary, a complete zero. That is, until she stopped talking. Even before her friend had uttered a word, the weedy girl had prepared her face for listening, opening her mouth wide in astonishment. She had held the pose as if for a dentist, her mouth a gaping hole as large as a lemon. Colin had time to shoot off a roll of film before she closed it. He knew that he had something. The girl’s freaky eagerness to please would be there in the photographs for all to see. He left, impatient to be in his darkroom.
Back home, he checked his messages.
“Colin, what’s up man? It’s Geoff—Geoff White. That tanning brochure you sent me a few weeks back with your girl in it—well, I’ve got a job for her. I reckon it could be worth six grand or thereabouts—a calendar number. A bit of travel and all. Call me, okay?”
Colin put the phone down, forgetting all about the darkroom and the open-mouthed girl, thinking only of the pervert in Chelsea who had cost him money.
42
Crompton and Partners claimed in their literature that they were London’s most contemporary estate agency. Walking into their Chelsea office, Henry could see that it was certainly true of the staff. No one was over thirty and, without exception, they were all good-looking.
Helen, blonde, exquisite, and a “senior negotiator,” guided Henry to her desk. It was uncluttered; nothing on it but the very latest laptop—as slim as a January magazine. She opened it, ready for work.
“I want to sell my house in Brentwood Place.”
“One of my favorite streets—like the country in London. I love it.”
“The thing is, I want to sell it quietly. No advertising, no editorials”—Henry waved a hand at her computer—“no hoopla.”
“Sometimes it’s necessary, but not in this case. We have a waiting list for Brentwood Place.”
She agreed on a time to see the house that afternoon. She said they
had sold a property in the street not long ago and the buyer had paid well over the asking price. As they shook hands, she remained businesslike. He had been expecting a winning smile, but it seemed that was not the contemporary thing to do.
Later, after her inspection of the house, they agreed on an asking price and arranged that viewings would be in the afternoons only. Henry wanted the house immaculate, but preferred that Mrs Abraham, the architect of that perfection, was out of the way.
The house was sold in a week to a Russian businessman who could pay cash. Exchange and completion were guaranteed in four weeks.
“I’ll stay until you go, if that’s all right. You’ll need a hand getting everything ready for the movers.”
“That’s kind of you, Mrs. Abraham. What will you do after—I mean will you look for another job?”
“My afternoon lady wants me to do more hours. She’s always on about it. There’s so much ironing, what with the children, but I never wanted to leave while you were here, not while Mrs. Cage’s things were still about …”
She could not go on and hurried down to the laundry room. He knew that she had been close to Nessa, but it had never occurred to him that she had stayed on after the divorce by choice, that there had been other options. He wondered if she might have preferred spending more time with her afternoon lady in a home with bustle and children. He imagined her coming into his house each day, not even the tick of a clock to welcome her.