‘That’s a partial view, I’d say.’
‘Fine. But where’s the digital quarter round here? Where’s the university lab doing innovative stuff in life sciences? That’s where you should have taken me, David. Less metal-bashing, more key-punching.’
‘Next time, then, Jason.’
‘Ha, right. But, listen, it was good to get a look at where you come from. What’s made you the curious fellow you are. You’re aware of your singularity, right?’
‘As a northeast Tory? Yup. I couldn’t miss it.’
‘It’s more than that. There are enough posh Northumbrians, still a few geriatric Thatcherites. But you have something else – that thing of being the people’s man? This party always has a role for someone who sounds like they could be that. Right now it’s you, David. Don’t get me wrong, I know what you’re really like, which is, clearly, a bit of a cunt.’
Blaylock nearly had to laugh at the heedlessness of it. Instead he said, ‘That’s not very collegiate of you, now is it?’
‘Oh come on – you connive, you play the game, set people up, you’ve got your foot-soldiers. It’s okay. You can be yourself with me.’
‘You, of course, are a saint.’
‘I don’t say my hands are clean. But I don’t pretend, not like you. I’m not in knots that way. It’s why I don’t really see you as competition.’
‘I am not a threat to your … ambitions, Jason.’
‘I know you’re not, but I think you’d like to be. I don’t see you in the frame, though, David. I get why you impress a few people, but I see your limitations. Where’s your base support on the backbenches? Your so-called common touch maybe gets you a few admiring columns from the broadsheets and their readers, who’d never vote Tory in a million years … And ID cards are going to do for you with that lot, I’m afraid.’
They had pulled up into the station car park, and Malahide’s entourage were already on the steps. Malahide shot Blaylock a look so well pleased that it nearly invited a sock to the jaw. Blaylock merely clapped his shoulder.
‘Thanks for coming. I’m glad we had this talk.’
*
He and Andy stopped by the Maryburn house where they donned old clothes, Blaylock loaning his bodyguard a spare pair of denims and a shirt, since they were similarly sized; while from his neglected garage Blaylock retrieved wire and shears, bolts and a drill, and his dependable twelve-foot ladder. Then they drove up through sunlit Durham to Bea’s pensioner’s cottage in Barnard Castle, where, in the manner of the fairy tale, they cut a path through stooped and clinging boughs to her door. Bea let them know – in her reticent fashion, never knowingly in anyone’s debt – that she was glad they had come. She made tea and when Blaylock asked after her health, she replied, ‘I’ve been better.’
In Bea’s company Blaylock was reminded that Jennie was the apple who fell not far from the tree. Bea had been marked for marriage and motherhood like every girl in her class of 1960 but instead had gone to college and carved a career for herself as a radio producer and Mother of Chapel. He had known her to be formidable, always good in a crisis: it was typical, in a way, that she had beaten cancer by chemotherapy and stoicism, then buried her husband the next year, without falling apart as Blaylock believed he would have done in her place. Now she managed alone, defiantly, still driving herself about, still dressing herself smartly. But she moved unsteadily now, her hair had grown back ash-grey, the once-taut lines of her square face appeared gaunt. Her eyes, still startlingly pale blue, had lost their old sense of fast mooring.
As she enquired politely about Westminster business he hastened to drain his tea. ‘Better crack on while we have the light.’
He and Andy lopped the worst of the tangled branches, heaved up the tree and nestled it atop a privet; then they measured, drilled holes, sunk bolts, and clipped and twisted at long wires until the wisteria trunk was snugly re-fixed against the brickwork by the bay window. As they struggled to artistically ‘train’ a few straggly boughs Bea came to the doorstep with a critical look and issued a few directives.
In truth, she seemed as pleased as Blaylock had ever seen her. Back when he had courted Jennie, Bea had appeared to approve of him without fuss, by a nod of the head; ten years later she had disapproved of him, quite decisively, in much the same manner. After he had assured her it had been the simplest of errands and she had waved them away down Darlington Road, he was heartened to think that here was one sober judge who had ruled he was not such a bad man. From the road he called Jennie to confirm the job was done, and she, too, was unusually, gratifyingly effusive. He looked forward to seeing her.
*
Shortly after Sunday lunchtime Blaylock presented himself at Jennie’s Islington door and was taken aback to have it opened to him by a strange girl with a long lick of vermilion hair half-obscuring her smoky eye. She wore a washed-out hoodie, torn jeans and boots, a ring high in her left ear and a stud in her right nostril. She seemed very much at home even as Blaylock gaped at her.
Jennie climbed the stairs from the basement, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘Hi David, this is Alex’s friend Esther?’
Alex was behind Jennie, and he put a possessive hand on Esther’s arm, whereupon they mounted the stairs together. As a pair they certainly had the proper conspiratorial air as Blaylock remembered it.
He followed Jennie into the sitting room.
‘Are they an item?’
‘I’d be glad of it. Think it’s just friends for now. He met her at a gig? Nice girl, she’s doing a photography diploma at the City College – she’s twenty. So, she’d be a cradle-snatcher, to be fair.’
‘My god. I hope he knows what he’s doing.’
‘Eh, he’s got a lot going for him, whether you see it or not. Listen, do you mind if he stops in today? He’s a bit besotted, to be honest.’
‘Of course not.’ Blaylock smiled, wanting to say that he was all for infatuation. Today, though, Jennie was all business. Then their daughters appeared, Molly in her favourite jacket and flowery leggings, Cora in a version of Esther’s slacker duds, though on her they seemed purposely shapeless.
‘Cora, love,’ sighed her mother, ‘would you not think to wear the new top I got you?’
Cora only yanked her hoodie top over her head such that her hair protruded scarecrow-fashion. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘It’s whatever makes her happy,’ reasoned Blaylock.
‘No, David, it’s whatever makes me happy.’ But the look she threw him was pert, more in the way of the old routines that made Blaylock obscurely content.
It was a fair, blowy autumn afternoon and so they walked to the nearby park: Andy Grieve at the rear of the foot patrol, Molly trundling along on her bicycle, Blaylock swinging her fluorescent pink helmet by a strap, half-listening to the girl’s report of her waning enthusiasm for violin lessons, mindful of how clammed up Cora seemed, her fists thrust into her hoodie pockets as she traipsed away in front.
At the park’s pavilion café Cora frowned over the menu while Blaylock queried her fruitlessly about schoolwork and friends and then gave up. In the end she dipped carrot sticks into a tiny tub of hummus, listlessly so, even after Molly, having demolished a mound of chicken and chips, had secured Blaylock’s permission to go off and ride her bike round the paved perimeter.
‘Cora love, would you maybe take the hoodie off?’
‘No, I’ll be cold.’
‘You’re going to sit there like that?’
‘What are you going to do, Dad?’
He didn’t ‘erupt’, merely nodded, and stared out across the park at the perambulators and dog-walkers and Sunday footballers. There was something in Cora’s determined solitariness that just reminded him of him. For that and for her flat rejoinders, he had to count himself responsible. Molly had been just a baby, had been spared. But when Cora and Alex were small children he had shouted at them terribly, inexcusably, and over time, even if only in their own reduced ways, they had begun to throw bac
k at him the anger they had witnessed. ‘If all you ever do is try and settle it by force,’ Jennie had told him quietly, ‘you never learn a better way.’
Unhappy at feeling the past so close at hand again, Blaylock allowed his thoughts to stray instead toward the thousand drear dilemmas of work. Though he managed to keep his phone inside his jacket, his thoughts were soon elsewhere. The letter from Eve had stayed with him, as had Madolyn Redpath’s contempt. He wondered what on earth he could do to redeem himself, since every option was painful.
It was the guttural bark of the dog that made him look up sharply, in time to see the scene unfold on the concrete forecourt in front of the café – he saw the German Shepherd, free of its leash, bound toward Molly on her bike, he saw her swerve dramatically and come crashing off head-first and un-helmeted onto the concrete.
He was out of his chair in an instant and yet Andy Grieve had moved before him, and got there first. He waved away the dog-owner’s flapping apologies and crouched by Andy, who was carefully elevating Molly’s upper body. To Blaylock’s alarm there were no tears, no blood, just a groggy, disoriented, awfully pale face.
‘She wasn’t out, was she, Andy?’
‘No, boss.’
Blaylock took over the holding of her and stared into her helpless pupils. ‘Get Martin, she needs the hospital.’
*
In the A&E waiting room he cradled Molly and buried his nose in her hair as fitful sobs finally came forth. He cursed himself for having let it happen – for all that he had suffered worse mortifications in front of a triage nurse. Gradually Molly consented to take small sips of water, spoke mournfully of a headache, but seemed to have come round.
Cora had been whisked home by the police vehicle before he had even reached Jennie on the phone, whereupon he had found her unusually calm. He was mildly surprised she had not chosen to join them, but then his reassurances, however guiltily, that all would be well had tended to ward off a mercy mission. He had wanted to do penance, and he was feeling fractionally better for it.
The A&E was fairly crowded with people, wearily accepting of the wait to varying degrees. The television was tuned to a drear afternoon soap for the grown-ups. The donated toys and games and injected plastic play-sets were heavily weathered and amputated of working parts, batteries long dead. Blaylock’s phone had no games. But Molly disinterred a chapter-book and he read to her and she to him, and so they rubbed along until disturbed by the swish of the automatic doors, and a miserable mucus-ridden sob.
Blaylock looked up to see a woman in obvious distress, shuffling into the waiting space with the awkward assistance of a female companion who had a close hold of her shaking shoulders. The woman was large, ageless and sexless in sweatshirt and sweatpants, unidentifiable under a curtain of long dry dark hair. Once she had been helped to sit, the distress became clearer for she raised her head and took her hand away from where she had been pressing a handkerchief. There was blood on her fingers, blood on her forehead, blood on the handkerchief. One eye socket was bruised – even, Blaylock feared, depressed. He could not guess how many blows she had sustained about the head and face. But he folded Molly into his arms against the sight. He had no wish to stare himself, but he sensed the whole room was sharing the discomfort.
The woman’s companion – of similar age but lean and better attired – had crouched by her yet wore a look of curious sternness.
‘I can’t stay, Gracie. But you’ll be okay?’
After the briefest glance Gracie returned the hankie to her eye socket.
‘This time, but, you have to do it. Right? It can’t happen again. If it does I can’t be helping you … You understand? If you don’t do something it’ll never change, you’ll get no peace and nor will the rest of us neither …’
Gracie emitted a great shaking sob then was quiet, as if crushed. Her friend got back to her feet, looking sorrowful and angry. Blaylock made eye contact and she shot him a hard look. Because he was nosy, he wondered? Or because he was a man? Or because she felt guilty over leaving? At any rate, with another swish of the doors she was gone.
It wasn’t long before a black mother with a bag of mints sidled over. She sat for some moments before Gracie took a mint and uttered thanks in a voice thick with phlegm and embedded distress. But she only held the mint in her fist.
*
By 6 p.m. they were back to Islington with a clean bill of health and a sheet of instructions on monitoring head injuries. He carried his daughter to the door, where Jennie nodded at the sight of how deeply Molly had burrowed into her father’s neck. Her sympathetic look seemed to encompass them both. She leaned in to nuzzle Molly, near enough for Blaylock to breathe the scent of her long hair.
‘Is it okay if I take her up?’ he asked. Jennie nodded.
Molly stirred. ‘Can I go in your bed, Mummy?’
‘Of course, sweetheart.’
Upstairs he held her steady as she undressed to vest and pants then slid under her mother’s heavy down-filled duvet. Blaylock stroked her forehead, whispered his affections, and lay down next to her at a suitable remove, careful to keep his muddy-soled Oxfords over the edge of the bed.
In the dark his head swam somewhat – from the daze of the day, and the soothing maritime shades of the room, such that he could have believed they were alone together in a cabin on the ocean.
The room was an affable mess, an inversion of his own. Papers were piled on every flat space, not just the roll-top bureau but Jennie’s vanity table and the long trunk at the foot of the iron bed-frame. A clutch of dry-cleaning bags hung from her Scandinavian wardrobe, though already removed was a sheer silvery dress that he thought stunning, evidently tried on and ready for use. He glanced to the bedside clock, to find his view obscured by a screwdriver atop a bag of metal screws. Then he heard a light rap on the door and eased himself off the bed.
Downstairs in the half-light of the hall he wanted to tell her about what he had seen and how well they had been seen to at the hospital; and yet he struggled for words.
‘It was a … god, you know … you see some things. Misery.’
‘God bless the NHS, eh? Listen, next week? I’ve a plan to maybe take the children off for the weekend. I wondered if we could shift things?’
‘What you up to?’
‘Just a couple of nights away. Camping.’
‘You’re kidding me?’
‘There’s a first time for everything, David. The site’s just inside the M25 but it could mean we’re back later on Sunday. Might you want to see them Friday day instead? Or have all the following weekend?’
‘It’s not the easiest. I’m in Brussels Thursday and Friday. Let’s say sometime Sunday and I’ll take what I get, eh?’
For the first time all weekend she seemed less pleased with him, but not, he hoped, vitally so. As she showed him to the door he hoped for some gesture of physical closeness, but he could read from her eyes that her mind was elsewhere.
*
Back home in his study he sat for some time staring at Eve Mewengera’s letter, aware that the hour was getting late and that something in his heart was already resolved, such that to deny it would be the worst karma: the low repudiation of what one knew to be true, and at another’s expense.
He made two phone calls, the first to Eric Manning, with apologies for the lateness of the hour, asking Eric to contact Immigration Control immediately. The second was to Madolyn Redpath.
‘Madolyn, it’s David Blaylock. I thought you should know, I’ve revoked the deportation order on Eve Mewengera. The concerns for her health and wellbeing, I believe, are correct, despite the assurances we’ve had. So she won’t fly from Heathrow tonight, she’ll be released from Blackwood, and her appeal can restart.’
‘I, god … I’m amazed. Thank you … My god, Eve will thank you.’
‘I’ll consider it a favour if you don’t look to make great hay out of this or tell the world I’ve belatedly seen sense. It’s a delicate matter and I’ve weighed it
carefully on its terms.’
‘You mean you’re afraid you’ll have to do it again?’
‘Just in this case, I saw sufficient grounds to reconsider.’
‘Well, listen … I can’t say all that will follow but “just in this case” you can be assured I think you’re brilliant and I could kiss you.’
After the call ended he felt an overpowering oddness, as if he was himself newly discharged from hospital and taking tentative steps.
6
His regular Monday morning gatherings of the troops were bumped, for he had to prepare to head to Gravesend before 11 a.m. and first had some urgent business he hoped to transact. Thus he went to 11 Downing Street to see Caroline Tennant.
‘I’ve been lobbied for some time about the grave situation of refuge services for women fleeing domestic violence? A shortage of beds and skilled people, the numbers turned away getting to be concerning … I sourced figures on what it would cost to protect the beds we have, ensure they stay open. It’s ten million. My view is we have to do it.’
Caroline was giving him a look he thought worryingly polite – pitying, even. ‘How long have you been considering this, David?’
‘Too long. A month or more.’
‘You’ve not just buckled to pressure from the Post?’
‘I believe that “pressure” is rightly applied. I think it was an oversight of mine that I want to remedy. Because it’s an emergency.’
‘Wouldn’t you say the Post campaign, from what I’ve seen, has presented rather a uniform vision of the problem?’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’
‘The women on the front pages – the case studies? White, working women in the main, aren’t they? Don’t the services tend to deal with more … intractable problems? Women without income, or drug and alcohol issues that they share with their abusers? Women with lots of children who speak no English? Obviously I can see how one could fill every bed, I just wonder what you do next to remedy the problem?’
The Knives Page 23